example that her niece and nephew should be defaulters. The motive
might have worked on Gillian, but it was a lower one, therefore
mentioned.

She had seen Mrs. Hablot at the Italian class, and thought her a mere
girl, and an absolute subject of Aunt Jane's stumbling pitifully,
moreover, in a speech of Adelchi's; therefore evidently not at all
likely to teach Sunday subjects half so well as herself!

Nor was there anything amiss on that first Sunday. The lessons were
as well and quietly gone through as if with mamma, and there was a
pleasant little walk on the esplanade before the children's service
at St. Andrew's; after which there was a delightful introduction to
some of the old books mamma had told them of.

They were all rather subdued by the strangeness and newness of their
surroundings, as well as by anxiety. If the younger ones were less
anxious about their parents than was their sister, each had a plunge
to make on the morrow into a very new world, and the Varleys'
information had not been altogether reassuring. Valetta had learnt
how many marks might be lost by whispering or bad spelling, and how
ferociously cross Fraulein Adler looked at a mistake in a German
verb; while Fergus had heard a dreadful account of the ordeals to
which Burfield and Stebbing made new boys submit, and which would be
all the worse for him, because he had a 'rum' Christian name, and his
father was a swell.

Gillian had some experience through her elder brothers, and suspected
Master Varley of being guilty of heightening the horrors; so she
assured Fergus that most boys had the same sort of Christian names,