attempted to stone a frog in her highly indignant presence.

Then there was Archie Windebank, whose father had the next place to
theirs; he was a fair, solemn boy, who treated her with an immense
deference; he used to blush when she asked him to join her in play.
The day before she had left for school, he had confessed his
devotion in broken accents; she had thought of him for quite a week
after she had left home. How absurd and trivial it all seemed, now
that she was to face the stern realities of life!

The next thing she recalled was the news of her father's ruin. This
calamity was more conveyed to her by the changed look in his face,
when she next saw him, than by anything else.

She had been, at once, taken away from the expensive school at which
she was being educated and had been sent to Brandenburg College,
then languishing in Hammersmith Terrace, while her father went to
live at Dinan, in Brittany, where he might save money in order to
make some sort of a start, which might ultimately mean a provision
for his daughter.

Next, she remembered--this she would never forget--the terrible day
on which Miss Helen Mee had called her into the study to tell her
that she would never again see her dear father in this world. Tears
came to Mavis's eyes whenever she thought of it. Orphaned,
friendless, with no one to give her the affection for which her
lonely soul craved, Mavis had stayed on at Brandenburg College,
where the little her father had left sufficed to pay for her board
and schooling. This sum lasted till she was sixteen, when, having
passed one or two trumpery examinations, she was taken on the staff