belong to her class. Day after day they heard the same lectures,
listened submissively to the same reproofs, and toiled on upon that
bleak bare high-road to learning, along which it was her delight to
drive them. Nothing like a flower brightened their weary way--it was
all alike dust and barrenness; but they ploughed on dutifully,
cramming their youthful minds with the hardest dates and facts to be
found in the history of mankind, the dreariest statistics, the
driest details of geography, and the most recondite rules of
grammar, until the happy hour arrived in which they took their final
departure from Albury Lodge, to forget all they had learnt there in
the briefest possible time.

How my thoughts used to wander away sometimes as I sat at my desk,
distracted by the unmelodious sound of Miss Susan's voice lecturing
some victim in her own division at the next table, while one of the
girls in mine droned drearily at Lingard, or Pinnock's _Goldsmith_, as
the case might be! How the vision of my own bright home haunted me
during those long monotonous afternoons, while the March winds made
the poplars rock in the garden outside the schoolroom, or the April
rain beat against the great bare windows!


CHAPTER II.


MILLY'S VISITOR.


It was not often that I had a half-holiday to myself, for Miss Susan
Bagshot seemed to take a delight in finding me something to do on