“Oh! OH! Miss Montague, there it is just behind you! There, behind your foot! Oh! Oh! it’s run up your petticoat!” and Elinor ran out to shake her skirts. “There, it’s run under the desk.” But it had really run under the desk long since, only Elinor had grown tired of the monotony of sitting still, and the others enjoyed it immensely; to see the dignified teacher skipping about thinking the mouse was on her was to them delightful. Elinor did not stay long at school—she left in about a year. She had never made much progress there, lessons evidently not being her particular _forte_. The only thing she had perhaps really learnt was to recite Gray’s “Elegy,” and even Miss Montague gave her credit for being able to do that. The school lives of Maggie and Deborah afterwards became fairly calm. Marion also was reconciled to the inevitable, chiefly no doubt because one of the clergymen sent his son to the same school soon afterwards, and upon that there followed a doctor’s daughter. This girl made great friends with Maggie and Deborah, and the friendship lasted for a good many years. But she at least was strong enough to keep to the rule of never speaking to any other girls but as inferiors. When she first came her mother had expressly forbidden that she should be caned; consequently the other girls detested, even hated her. Deborah out of school soon forgot all about all this. She never formed any friendships except with those girls who distinctly put themselves out of the way to approach her, and these naturally were very few. There were two things only that made up her world. One was love for her father, and the other, love of a world created out of involuntary dreams. Together with her love for her father went a strong religious tendency; she had a great belief in the goodness of God and the love of Christ. Instinctively Deborah felt the cloud that was hanging over them, yet could not account for it. For the first two years after leaving the country her father had answered various advertisements, and gone personally in search of situations, but nothing ever came of them. Then came a third year, one of the dullest and gloomiest that could be imagined. There was very little to live on, and only those who have had to live on nothing and yet appear as if they lived on something can fully understand its miseries.