n the
uncompromising remark: "You strike me as a very bad girl, my dear; you
strike me as a very bad girl!"

PART II.

III.

It will doubtless seem to the reader very singular that, in spite of
this reflection, which appeared to sum up her judgment of the matter,
Mrs. Portico should, in the course of a very few days, have consented to
everything that Georgina asked of her. I have thought it well to narrate
at length the first conversation that took place between them, but I
shall not trace further the details of the girl's hard pleading, or
the steps by which--in the face of a hundred robust and salutary
convictions--the loud, kind, sharp, simple, sceptical, credulous woman
took under her protection a damsel whose obstinacy she could not speak
of without getting red with anger. It was the simple fact of Georgina's
personal condition that moved her; this young lady's greatest eloquence
was the seriousness of her predicament She might be bad, and she had a
splendid, careless, insolent, fair-faced way of admitting it, which at
moments, incoherently, inconsistently, and irresistibly, resolved the
harsh confession into tears of weakness; but Mrs. Portico had known her
from her rosiest years, and when Georgina declared that she could n't go
home, that she wished to be with her and not with her mother, that she
could n't expose herself,--how could she?--and that she must remain with
her and her only till the day they should sail, the poor lady was forced
to make that day a reality. She was overmastered, she was cajoled,
she was, to a certain extent, fascinated. She had to accept Georgina's
rigidity (she had none of her own to oppose to it; she was only violent,
she was not continuous), and once she did this, it was plain, after all,
that to take her young friend to Europe was to help her, and to leave
her alone was not to help her. Georgina literally frightened Mrs.
Portico into compliance. She was evidently capable of strange things if
thrown upon her own devices.

So, from one day to another Mrs. Portico announced that she was really
at last about to sail for foreign lands (her doctor having told her that
if she did n't look out she would get too old to enjoy them), and that
she had invited that robust Miss Gressie, who could stand so long on her
feet, to accompany her. There was joy in the house of Gressie at this
announcement, for though the danger was over, it was a great general
advantage to Georgina to