"But," he continued, taking me by the hand and leading me towards the
lounge behind him, "this is not exactly what I want to talk to you
about; I admit that you are backward in many respects, but that is not
altogether your fault."

I was looking at him with riveted attention while he spoke, sublimely
innocent of the import of a single word he uttered.

"And," he added, in a slower and more directly communicative tone, as
he disengaged his hand from mine and leaned his arm on the back of the
lounge behind me, "I have decided to send you to a first-rate school,
Amey, where you will have a chance to perfect yourself in every way;
do you think you will like to go away to school?" he asked, so timidly
that one would have thought my opinion on the matter could have some
little value.

Before I had time to master this question with all its ponderous
possibilities, my step-mother observed obligingly,

"Of course she would like it, Alfred, and even if she wouldn't you
know she ought to go; Amelia herself knows," she continued, without
looking at me, "that she is quite a dunce for her age, and will need
to work very hard in order to make up for lost time. So, your father
and I have decided," she added conclusively, "that you shall go to
boarding-school, Amelia, as early next month as you can be got ready."

The word "boarding-school" was to me, perhaps, the vaguest and most
indefinite in the English language. I knew that such places existed,
but it had never entered into my juvenile conception of things to
associate them in any way with my present or future career. In my