Fragments of conversation were sometimes caught by Mamma Pretend, and she thought to herself, "What strange authors they do set young people to study now-a-days! When I was a girl we had _Magnall's Questions_ and _Little Arthur's History of England_!" It was Miss Crow's voice, however. No mistake about that. "Yes, and he said to me, 'I adore you with all the fervor of a free and untrammeled genius, with the noble indignation of a spirit on fire against wrong and oppression. It is true that in the meantime, though of an exalted race, I am poor, receiving only twelve shillings a week in one of the institutions of trust vulgarly called a pawn-broker's. But next year and every succeeding year I shall have my salary raised by the sum of two shillings--per fortnight. Oh, Principia, my Principia----'" At this moment, overcome by her own pardonable curiosity, Mrs. Pretend entered hurriedly to see what they were doing. She found them busily employed, with head bent over an exercise in dictation.... "From Milton's Essay on Macaulay!" Miss Polly Pretend explained in answer to her mother's question. "Dear me," said Mrs. Pretend, as she went out, "and I always thought that Milton wrote poetry. It's true I never could make out how they could say that blank verse was really poetry--not, I mean, like 'How doth the little busy' and 'Twinkle, twinkle'! But he wrote a long time ago, and perhaps then they had not learned to make the words at the end rhyme!" But now I must tell how Polly Pretend corrupted the whole house. At first we had only called Polly's father and mother "the Pretends" because they belonged to Polly, and so that we might know who was meant. But to begin with, Mrs. Pretend had to make up a lot of things to explain why, after all these prizes, Polly had not gone back to Olympia School. She had to think up something that people would believe. You see, Polly's inventions were really too daring--as that after a year abroad she and Miss Crow were going to set up a college of their own, a far better one than Olympia. And then she would show Miss Gray! Now you will hardly believe me, but old Pretend, who was on the County Council and fussed about roads and drainage--"an innocent enough old duck," Sir Toady calls him--took to magnifying Miss Polly Pretend and her governess. I think he actually began to count up his dollars to see if he had really enough money to start Polly Pretend in a school of her own. But one fine day he met old Lovell, of Castle Lovell, at some joint business meeting about a Combination Poorhouse, or something like that. Now old Lovell is a fearful big-wig, and looked up to by everybody because he is too stupid ever to pretend the least little bit. He would get found out in a moment if he did. But solid as the Bank of England, and as conceited as Mir-row with a rosette tied to her tail last King's birthday!