sends for "Mary Burns," who presently comes—a gentle, fair, slim girl of fifteen, and into her charge am I given and dismissed. She takes me upstairs, and having washed my face and smoothed my hair, I go down with her to the school-room, where (for it is a half-holiday) about fifty girls are reading, writing, talking, laughing, moving about, and buzzing like a hive of bees. The noise comforts and reassures me. What I have dreaded was the stillness, the stiff formality of the life of routine; clearly my notions of female school life were mistaken ones.
On our arrival we are quickly surrounded, and I am chaffed, catechised, and overhauled in a sufficiently merciless fashion. Though somewhat taken aback, I prove however equal to the occasion; for I am not one of a large family for nothing she who could retain any of that mauvaise honte yclept bashfulness, or be unable to fight her own battles after the training I have had, would either be a vicious idiot or a solemn and self-satisfied prig. So I retort and riposte with a success that presently beats my assailants out of the field. They bear me no ill-will, though, any more than I do them; they do but seek to test the value of the metal, and small blame to them if on finding it to be false they cry out. I think they find I am not that, however; and though some hard knocks are exchanged, no malice is borne. By supper time I am feeling tolerably cheerful, but my heart sinks again as after prayers a chorus of "good-nights" echoes around me, and a storm of kisses, both deep and loud, beats on my astonished ears. There are about sixty females of all ages present, and they all kiss one another with a hearty vigour that sounds as if they liked it.
We are not a kissing family at home: there is much affection between us, but little sentiment. Save when we have quarrelled, or are going a journey, we rarely embrace each other. It is a matter of course to kiss mother whenever we can, but we never dream of indiscriminate caresses among ourselves—that must in-
