The plan had proved a great success, as far as Lily and I were concerned. Our bodily strength increased in the warm, sweet, southern air; we learned to talk French like natives; we rejoiced in long rambles through the vineyards and among the bands of flowers which soon began to appear in the land as the fair vanguard of spring; but it cannot be said that it was exactly a season of joy and repose for Miss Dolly. Miss Dolly was one of the mildest, most characterless single ladies that ever put on a cap. When she went into office at the Villa Chantilly, it was, of course, intended that she should rule her pupils; but the fable could not long be kept standing on its feet; it quickly appeared that her pupils, or at least one of her pupils, and that one myself, ruled her entirely. I insisted on all the furniture in the house making the strangest migrations from room to room about twenty times in succession, to suit my fancy; I vexed poor Miss Dolly’s soul by causing the cooks to give warning, one after another, because I would not be satisfied without going down daily into the kitchen to enter into an exhaustive study of the way to make omelettes; I made raids into the garden to gather flowers when I ought to have been practising my scales; I put on a bland air of submission when Miss Dolly made a supreme decree that we were never to be out after the dew began to fall; and then, while she slumbered in her armchair (with Rollin’s History, which she had been reading out loud, in her lap), coolly stepped out through the window on to the turf in the moonlight. Lily endeavoured, it is true, to strengthen Miss Dolly’s hands as far as she could, but at the same time I saw, plainly enough that smiles would now and then, in spite of herself, come creeping round her mouth as she watched my proceedings. The result of all this was, as might be naturally expected, that I grew more wilful than ever, and fonder of my own way in everything.