The scene partly explained itself. A pale little girl of nine years or thereabout was perched very insecurely, as it seemed, on the top of a high cabinet or chest of drawers. She had evidently climbed to her elevation by means of a stool placed upon a table, but the table had been pushed away, and she had no means of descending. While her two sisters, twins of fourteen, stood laughing at her discomfiture. A third girl, some two or three years older, sat reading in a window, with rather an elaborate appearance of taking no notice of the others. "What does this mean?" asked Lady Corbet again, helping the child down from her dangerous position. "What have you been about?" "Jem threw my doll up there on the cabinet," sobbed Betty, "and when I climbed up to get it, they took away the table! And they said," continued Betty, clinging to her mother, and pointing to a cupboard high up in the wall, "they said there was a skeleton in there!" "Nonsense!" returned Lady Corbet, sharply. "There is nothing whatever in the cupboard. Are you not ashamed, girls, to treat your poor sister so? Here is Mrs. Evans, your new governess, wondering at your bad manners!" To do them justice, the girls did look heartily ashamed. "I must say, Paulina, I think you might use your influence to prevent such tricks," said her mother, severely, turning to the young lady in the window, who had not moved. "At least," she added, sharply, "you might rise to your feet when your mother and your governess enter the room!" Paulina rose with the air of a martyr. "I beg your pardon, madam!" said she, in a mournful voice. "I am so used to noise and confusion that a little more or less does not attract my attention." "She is just as bad as the rest, only she is slyer about it!" cried the little girl. "I hate them all, that I do, and I wish I was dead—so!" Paulina darted a glance at her sister which was anything but amiable, and then casting her eyes on the floor, she stood in silence. "Hush! Hush! Let me hear not one word more, or nobody will have anything but bread and water till supper time!" said Lady Corbet, decidedly. "This is your new governess, Mrs. Winifred Evans, who has been brought up by my cousin the Lady Peckham, and is doubtless well qualified to teach you all you should know. She will remain with you from eight in the morning till six at night—were not those the hours we agreed upon, Mrs. Evans?—and you will obey her as you would your father and mother. Let me hear no complaints of any of you, from oldest to youngest—do you hear?" The young ladies courtesied demurely. Paulina lifted her heavy eyelids, and looked first at the newcomer and then at her mother. "Do I understand you, madam, to include me in the list of Mrs. Evans' pupils?" she asked. "Of course!" said her mother, sharply, again. "You have many things yet to learn, mistress, though you think yourself so wise. Let me hear that you show yourself both obedient and apt to learn."