as Nelly had just said, choking up on the last sentence. I _did_ feel unhappy, and very much like "choking up" too, when I passed the great windows, that looked into the playground, and remembered all the mad hours of frolic I had passed there; when I took down my shawl from the peg where it had hung nightly for five years, and remembered, with a thrill, it was "the last time;" when the lid of my empty desk fell down with an echo that sounded drearily through the long school-room; when I thought "where I might be this time to-morrow," and when Agnes' and Nelly's arms twined about me, reminded me of the rapidly approaching hour of separation from those who had represented the world to me for five years--whom I had loved and hated, and by whom I had been loved and hated, with all the fervor of sixteen. The hatreds now were softened down by the nearness of the parting; all my ancient foes, (and they had not been few), had "made up" and promised forgiveness and forgetfulness entire; and all ancient feuds were dead. All my friends now loved me with tenfold the ardor they had ever felt before; all the staff of teachers, who had, I am afraid, a great deal to forgive, of impatient self-will, mad spirits and thoughtless inattention, were good enough to forget all, and remember only what they were pleased to call the truth and honesty and courage, that in the years we had been together, they had never known to fail. They little knew how their unlooked for praise humbled me; and how far more deeply than any reproach, it made me realize the waste of time and talents that I had to look back upon. So, most unexpectedly to myself, I found that I was going off with flying colors; that all were joining to deplore my departure and laud my good qualities; and that, from being rather a "limb" in the eyes of the school, and a hopeless sinner in my own, I was promoted, temporarily, to the dignity of heroine at St. Catharine's.