e?" he asked.

"We only have our bags. Our trunks have gone by the way of Lumberton,"
explained Ruth.

"Ah! Well! All right!" grunted the driver, and started to shut the
door. Then he glanced from Ruth and Helen to the little foreign lady.
"I leave ye in good hands," he said, with a hoarse chuckle. "This here
lady is one o' yer teachers, Ma'mzell Picolet." He pronounced the
little lady's name quite as outlandishly as he did "mademoiselle." It
sounded like "Pickle-yet" on his tongue.

"That will do, M'sieur Dolliver," said the little lady, rather tartly.
"I may venture to introduce myself--is it not?"

She did not raise her veil. She spoke English with scarcely any
accent. Occasionally she arranged her phrases in an oddly foreign way;
but her pronunciation could not be criticised. Old Dolliver, the stage
driver, grinned broadly as he closed the door.

"Ye allus make me feel like a Frenchman myself, when ye say 'moosher,'
Ma'mzell," he chuckled.

"You are going to Briarwood Hall, then, my young ladies?" said Miss
Picolet.

"Yes, Ma'am," said Ruth, shyly.

"I shall be your teacher in the French language--perhaps in deportment
and the graces of life," the little lady said, pleasantly. "You will
both enter into advanced classes, I hope?"

Helen, after all, was more shy than Ruth with strangers. When she
became acquainted she gained confidence rapidly. But now Ruth answered
again for both:

"I was ready to enter the Cheslow High School; Helen is as far advanced
as I am in all studies, Miss Picolet."

"Good!" returned the teacher. "We shall get on famously with such
bright girls," and she nodded several times.

But she was not really companionable. She never raised her veil. And
she only talked with the girls by fits and starts. There were long
spaces of time when she sat huddled in the corner of her seat, with her
face turned from them, and never said a word.

But the nearer the rumbling old stagecoach approached the promised land
of Briarwood Hall the more excited Ruth and Helen became. They gazed
out of the open windows of the coach doors and thought the country
through which they traveled ever so pretty. Occasionally old Dolliver
would lean out from his seat, twist himself around in a most impossible
attitude so as to see into the coach, and bawl out to the two girls
some announcement of the historical or other interest of the localities
they passed.

Suddenly, as they surmounted a lon