Herr Schliefer would cease to scatter snuff on the carpet as he sat
drumming with his fingers on the keyboard and grunting out brief
interjections of impatience.

'What does it matter about Herr Schliefer?' Jill would say, in a sort of
fury. 'I like him a hundred times better than I do that mincing little
poll-parrot of a Madame Blanchard: she is odious, and I hate her, and I
hate Fräulein too. It is not the lessons I mind; one has to learn lessons
all one's life; it is being shut up like a bird in a cage when one's
wings are ready for flight. I should like to fly away from this room,
from Fräulein, from the whole of the horrid set; it makes me cross,
wicked, to live like this, and all your sugar-plums will do me no good.
Go away, Sara; you do not understand as Ursula does, it makes me feel bad
to see you standing there, looking so pretty and happy, and just laughing
at me.'

'Of course I laugh at you, Jocelyn, when you behave like a baby,'
returned Sara, trying to be severe, only her dimples betrayed her. 'Well,
as you are so cross, I shall go away. There is the chocolate I promised
you. Ta-ta.' And Sara put down the _bonbonnière_ on the table and walked
out of the room.

I was not surprised to see Jill push it away. No one understood the poor
child but myself; she was precocious, womanly, for her age; she had
twenty times the amount of brains that Sara possessed, and she was
starving on the education provided for her.

To dance and drill and write dreary German exercises, when one is
thirsting to drink deeply at the well of knowledge; to go round and round
the narrow monotonous course that had sufficed for Sara's moderate