festive occasion. Such are the changes of this fleeting world, and so
short-sighted are we poor mortals!

When the house door closed with a bang and a shake, it seemed to Miss
Kimmeens to be a very heavy house door, shutting her up in a wilderness
of a house. But, Miss Kimmeens being, as before stated, of a
self-reliant and methodical character, presently began to parcel out the
long summer-day before her.

And first she thought she would go all over the house, to make quite sure
that nobody with a great-coat on and a carving-knife in it, had got under
one of the beds or into one of the cupboards. Not that she had ever
before been troubled by the image of anybody armed with a great-coat and
a carving-knife, but that it seemed to have been shaken into existence by
the shake and the bang of the great street-door, reverberating through
the solitary house. So, little Miss Kimmeens looked under the five empty
beds of the five departed pupils, and looked, under her own bed, and
looked under Miss Pupford's bed, and looked under Miss Pupford's
assistants bed. And when she had done this, and was making the tour of
the cupboards, the disagreeable thought came into her young head, What a
very alarming thing it would be to find somebody with a mask on, like Guy
Fawkes, hiding bolt upright in a corner and pretending not to be alive!
However, Miss Kimmeens having finished her inspection without making any
such uncomfortable discovery, sat down in her tidy little manner to
needlework, and began stitching away at a great rate.

The silence all about her soon grew very oppressive, and the more so
because of the odd inconsistency that the more silent it was, the more
noises there were. The noise of her own needle and thread as she
stitched, was infinitely louder in her ears than the stitching of all the