[Illustration: Lady CHARLES BERESFORD Miss ARCHER Miss BRANSON.] [Illustration: Miss Flo Beresford. Miss Nellie Simmons. Miss Ripley] [Illustration: Miss LLOYD. Mrs. BRATE. Miss DECIMA MOORE] THE NANKEEN JACKET (FROM THE FRENCH OF GUSTAVE GUESVILLER.) "The young are eager for martyrdom." A STORY FOR CHILDREN. My friends make fun of my weakness for the colour of _yellow_. I confess that I adore it, notwithstanding that I have good reason to detest it. Truly, human nature is a bundle of contradictions! I love yellow because of a certain episode in my life which occurred when I was but eight years of age. I love nankeen above all on account of a jacket of that material, which played in that episode an important part. Ah! that jacket of nankeen! How came it about that I was smitten with the insane desire of possessing such a thing? The cause is not far to seek. It was _Love_! Love in a child of eight? Why not? You will see presently that I speak without any exaggeration. At that now distant time we resided at Auxerre. I knew how to read, write, and count. For the further progress of my education I was sent to a small day-school, kept by two maiden ladies--humble, gentle souls, who in affectionate care for their pupils satisfied in some degree their instinct of maternal tenderness. Poor Demoiselles Dulorre! Our school, which had been placed under the pious patronage of Saint Elisabeth, was a mixed one. That is to say, up to the age of ten years, boys and girls worked and played together. In spite of occasional quarrels, the system, on the whole, worked very well. I had not been eight days at Saint Elisabeth's before I fell in love. Do not laugh! I loved with all the strength of my child-nature, with a love disinterested, simple, sincere. It was Georgette whom I loved, but, alas! Georgette did not love me. How much I suffered in consequence! I used to hide myself in corners, shedding many tears, and racking my brains to find some means of pleasing the obdurate fair one. Labour in vain, a thankless task, at eight years of age or at thirty! To distinguish myself in my studies, to win by my exemplary conduct the encomiums of the sisters Dulorre--all this made no impression upon cruel Georgette. She made no secret of her preference for a dull, idle, blustering fellow of nine years old, who won all the races, who could fling a ball farther than anyone else, carry two huge dictionaries under his arm, and administer terrible thumps. This hero was rightly nicknamed _Met-a-Mort_. I knew what his blows were like, having been the involuntary recipient of some of them. Some, do I say? I had received more than a dilatory donkey on the road to the fair! And Georgette had only laughed! [Illustration: "MY REDOUBTABLE RIVAL."]