And she did. It was a little letter just saying that circumstances over which she had no control, etc., had caused such a pressure upon Olympia College that she was sorry there would not be a vacancy for Polly that year. Well, you can fancy--Polly's mother and father were very angry. So much so that they determined to start off at once to call on the heads of the college and complain. But Polly herself, as soon as she had heard from Ellen, the housemaid, what had happened, and how Miss Gray had been twenty minutes in the drawing-room, and gone away leaving her tea hardly "sipped," knew at once what was the matter. So she dissuaded her father and mother from going to Olympia College. She was not appreciated, she said. She had always known it. Even Miss Gray was jealous of her. And her mother said to her father, "I do not wonder at it, dear. It is all the effect of our too careful bringing up of Polly. Truly we may say with the Psalmist-- "'Than all her teachers now she has More understanding far!'" And in a way, do you know, she had. And it was the training that did it. But later on, Dear Diary, I shall write more about Polly Pretend, when she got a governess. For then she pretended and the governess pretended, and instead of getting out of the habit, as Hugh John says, seven Pretending Devils worse than the first entered into her. But of that another time. V PRINCIPIA _June continued, but nearer the end, and hotter._ Polly Pretend's governess, after she could not be received at Olympia, was Miss Principia Crow. She had more than three miles of testimonials, if all had been written out in a line in text hand and measured. The only curious thing was that the dates of all these were old, and Miss Principia was still fairly young. Also, she admitted having changed her name "for family reasons." But she seemed just the sort of person for Polly Pretend. She did not know much arithmetic--just enough to cheat at tennis. She had certificates that reached as far as "trig"--the wonderful science which makes the boys stamp and throw their books about the room when they have to study it. Now Pa and Ma Pretend had taken a great deal of trouble in providing a suitable companion for Polly, and in a way they had managed all right. Miss Crow pretended to teach, and Polly pretended to learn, and one knew as much about the matter as the other. Miss Crow passed the time in telling Polly how many people had been in love with her, and the hopes she had of as many more. Polly begged the loan of a pier-glass from her mother, and thought, as she pretended before it, smiling at herself and sweeping imaginary trains, how soon her turn would come to have scores of lovers all willing and anxious to drown themselves for her sake, like Miss Principia Crow.