that Miss Pupford's assistant knows all about it. For, sometimes of an
afternoon when Miss Pupford has been reading the paper through her little
gold eye-glass (it is necessary to read it on the spot, as the boy calls
for it, with ill-conditioned punctuality, in an hour), she has become
agitated, and has said to her assistant "G!" Then Miss Pupford's
assistant has gone to Miss Pupford, and Miss Pupford has pointed out,
with her eye-glass, G in the paper, and then Miss Pupford's assistant has
read about G, and has shown sympathy. So stimulated has the pupil-mind
been in its time to curiosity on the subject of G, that once, under
temporary circumstances favourable to the bold sally, one fearless pupil
did actually obtain possession of the paper, and range all over it in
search of G, who had been discovered therein by Miss Pupford not ten
minutes before. But no G could be identified, except one capital
offender who had been executed in a state of great hardihood, and it was
not to be supposed that Miss Pupford could ever have loved _him_.
Besides, he couldn't be always being executed. Besides, he got into the
paper again, alive, within a month.

On the whole, it is suspected by the pupil-mind that G is a short chubby
old gentleman, with little black sealing-wax boots up to his knees, whom
a sharply observant pupil, Miss Linx, when she once went to Tunbridge
Wells with Miss Pupford for the holidays, reported on her return
(privately and confidentially) to have seen come capering up to Miss
Pupford on the Promenade, and to have detected in the act of squeezing
Miss Pupford's hand, and to have heard pronounce the words, "Cruel
Euphemia, ever thine!"--or something like that. Miss Linx hazarded a
guess that he might be House of Commons, or Money Market, or Court
Circular, or Fashionable Movements; which would account for his getting
into the paper so often. But, it was fatally objected by the pupil-mind,
that none of those notabilities could possibly be spelt with a G.