rooms."

"Did anybody sell them to you?"

"No."

"Or give them to you?"

"Why, no;--at least not exactly give."

"There they were, and she took 'em," said the broad-back. Oh, what
a look Miss Grogram gave her! "Took them! of course I took them.
That is, you took them as much as I did. They were things that we
found lying about."

"What things?" asked Miss Macmanus, in a peculiarly strong-minded
tone.

Miss Grogram seemed to be for a moment silenced. I had been
ignored, as I have said, and my existence forgotten; but now I
observed that the eyes of the culprits were turned towards me,--the
eyes, that is, of four of them. Mrs. Jones looked at me from
beneath her fan; the two girls glanced at me furtively, and then
their eyes fell to the lowest flounces of their frocks.

Miss Grogram turned her spectacles right upon me, and I fancied that
she nodded her head at me as a sort of answer to Miss Macmanus. The
five pupils opened their mouths and eyes wider; but she of the broad
back was nothing abashed. It would have been nothing to her had
there been a dozen gentlemen in the room. "We just found a pair of