ining for that high faculty of imagination by virtue
of which, after all, we so largely love and hate, choose right or
wrong, bear and forbear, adapt ourselves to the ups and downs of this
world, and spur our dull souls to the high hopes of a better--anxiety on
these matters Mrs. Buller had none.

As to Mrs. Minchin, she would not have known what it meant if it had
been put in print for her to read.

Matilda's irritability was certainly repressed in public by school
discipline, and from Eleanor's companionship our interests were varied
and enlarged. But in spite of these advantages her health rapidly
declined. And this without its seeming to attract Miss Mulberry's
notice.

Indeed, she meddled very little in the matter of our health. She kept a
stock of "family pills," which she distributed from time to time amongst
us. They cured her headaches, she said; and she seemed rather aggrieved
that they did not cure Matilda's.

But poor Matilda's headaches brought more than their own pain to her.
They seemed to stupefy her, and make her quite incapable of work. Her
complexion took a deadly, pasty hue, one eye was almost entirely closed,
and to a superficial observer she perhaps did look--what Madame always
pronounced her--sulky. Then, no matter how fully any lesson was at her
fingers' ends, she stumbled through a series of childish blunders to
utter downfall; and Madame's wrath was only equalled by her irony. To
do Matilda justice, she often used almost incredible courage in her
efforts to learn a task in spite of herself. Now and then she was
successful in defying pain; but by some odd revenge of nature, what she
learned in such circumstances was afterwards wiped as completely from
her memory as an old sum is sponged from a slate.

To headache and backache, to vain cravings for more fresh air, and to an
inequality of spirits and temper to which Eleanor and I patiently
submitted, Matilda still added a cough, which seemed to exasperate
Madame as much as her stupidity.

Not that our French governess was cruelly disposed. When she took
Matilda's health in hand and gave her a tumbler of warm water every
morning before breakfast, she did so in all good faith. It was a remedy
that she used herself.

Poor Matilda was furious both with Madame's warm-water cure and Miss
Mulberry's pill-box. She had a morbid hatred of being "doctored," which
is often characteristic of chest complaints. She struggled harder than
ever to work, in