"I suppose we are not as hot as the cook," suggested little "Peony" as we now called her, one very hot day, when we sat languidly struggling through our work in the stifling atmosphere of the school-room. "I thought of her to-day when I looked at that great fat leg of roast mutton. We're better off than she is." "And she's better off than if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta; but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are bad enough in this heat." "I shan't eat any dinner to-morrow, I think," said Eleanor; "I cannot keep awake after it this weather, so it's no use." "I wish I were back at Miss Martin's for the summer," said another girl. We knew to what this referred, and Madame being by a rare chance absent, we pressed for an account, in English, of Miss Martin's arrangements in the hot weather. "Miss Martin's" was a school at which this girl had been before she came to Bush House. "I can't think why on earth you left her," said Eleanor. "Well, this is nearer home for one thing, and the masters are better here, certainly. But she did take such care of us. It wasn't everlasting backaches, and headaches, and coughs, and pains in your side all along. And when the weather got hot (and it was a very warm summer when I was there), and she found we got sleepy at work after dinner, and had headaches in the afternoon, she said she thought we had better have a scrap meal in the middle of the day, and dine in the cool of the evening; and so we used to have cold rice-pudding or thick bread-and-butter, such as we should have had for tea, or anything there was, and tumblers of water, at one, and at half-past five we used to wash and dress; and then at six, just when we were getting done up with the heat and work, and yet cool enough to eat, we had dinner. I can tell you a good fat roast leg of mutton looked all right then! It cured all our headaches, and we worked twice as well, both at midday work and at getting lessons ready for next day after dinner. I know----" "Tais-toi, Lucy!" hissed Peony through her teeth. "Madame!" "Donnez-moi cette grammaire, Marguerite, s'il vous plait," said Lucy, as Madame entered. And I gave her the grammar, and we set to work again, full of envy for the domestic arrangements of Miss Martin's establishment during the dog days.