Not being illustrious, Matilda blushes to remember this early folly; and not being a poet's biographer, Aunt Theresa said in a severe voice, for the general behoof of the school-room, that "Little girls were sometimes very silly, and got a great deal of nonsense into their heads." I do not think it ever dawned upon her mind that girls' heads not being jam-pots--which if you do not fill them will remain empty--the best way to keep folly out was to put something less foolish in. She would have taken a great deal of trouble that her daughters might not be a flounce behind the fashions, and was so far-seeing in her motherly anxieties, that she junketed herself and Major Buller to many an entertainment, where they were bored for their pains, that an extensive acquaintance might ensure to the girls partners, both for balls and for life when they came to require them. But after what fashion their fancies should be shaped, or whether they had wholesome food and tender training for that high faculty of imagination by virtue of which, after all, we so largely love and hate, choose right or wrong, bear and forbear, adapt ourselves to the ups and downs of this world, and spur our dull souls to the high hopes of a better--anxiety on these matters Mrs. Buller had none. As to Mrs. Minchin, she would not have known what it meant if it had been put in print for her to read. Matilda's irritability was certainly repressed in public by school discipline, and from Eleanor's companionship our interests were varied and enlarged. But in spite of these advantages her health rapidly declined. And this without its seeming to attract Miss Mulberry's notice. Indeed, she meddled very little in the matter of our health. She kept a stock of "family pills," which she distributed from time to time amongst us. They cured her headaches, she said; and she seemed rather aggrieved that they did not cure Matilda's. But poor Matilda's headaches brought more than their own pain to her. They seemed to stupefy her, and make her quite incapable of work. Her complexion took a deadly, pasty hue, one eye was almost entirely closed, and to a superficial observer she perhaps did look--what Madame always pronounced her--sulky. Then, no matter how fully any lesson was at her fingers' ends, she stumbled through a series of childish blunders to utter downfall; and Madame's wrath was only equalled by her irony. To do Matilda justice, she often used almost incredible courage in her efforts to learn a task in spite of herself. Now and then she was successful in defying pain; but by some odd revenge of nature, what she learned in such circumstances was afterwards wiped as completely from her memory as an old sum is sponged from a slate. To headache and backache, to vain cravings for more fresh air, and to an inequality of spirits and temper to which Eleanor and I patiently submitted, Matilda still added a cough, which seemed to exasperate Madame as much as her stupidity.