said she--"what an audacious"--Emotion prevented her from completing
either sentence. The carriage rolled away; the great gates were
closed; the bell rang for the dancing lesson. The world is before
the two young ladies; and so, farewell to Chiswick Mall.



CHAPTER II

In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign


When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last
chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the
little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss
Jemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an
almost livid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was
scarcely more agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an
easy frame of mind, saying--"So much for the Dixonary; and, thank
God, I'm out of Chiswick."

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss
Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had
left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in
that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors
of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old
gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast,
with a very agitated countenance, "I dreamed last night that I was
flogged by Dr. Raine." Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty
years in the course of that evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were