gging to be sent
back to him. This, of course, was impossible. Still, when the letter,
blotted with tears, reached him in Calcutta, Captain Craigie's heart
was touched. If she was unhappy among his kinsfolk at Montrose, he
would send her somewhere else. But where? That was the question.

As luck would have it, by the same mail a second letter, offering a
solution of the problem, arrived from an Anglo-Indian friend. This was
Sir Jasper Nicolls, K.C.B., a veteran of Assaye and Bhurtpore, who had
settled down in England and wanted a young girl as companion for, and
to be brought up with, his own motherless daughter. The two got into
correspondence; and, the necessary arrangements having been completed,
little Lola Gilbert, beside herself with delight, was in the summer of
1830 packed off to Sir Jasper's house at Bath.

"Are you sorry to leave us?" enquired the eldest Miss Craigie.

"Not a bit," was the candid response.

"Mark my words, Miss, you'll come to a bad ending," predicted the
other sourly.

III

But if Bath was to be a "bad ending," it was certainly to be a good
beginning. There, instead of bleakness and constant reproof, Lola
found herself wrapped in an atmosphere of warmth and friendliness. Sir
Jasper was kindness itself; and his daughter Fanny made the newcomer
welcome. The two girls took to one another from the first, sharing
each other's pleasures as they shared each other's studies. Thus, they
blushed and gushed when required; sewed samplers and copied texts;
learned a little French and drawing; grappled with Miss Mangnall's
_Questions for the Use of Young People_; practised duets and ballads;
touched the strings of the harp; wept over the poems of "L.E.L."; read
Byron surreptitiously, and the newly published _Sketches by Boz_
openly; admired the "Books of Beauty" and sumptuously bound "Keepsake
Annuals," edited by the Countess of Blessington and the Hon. Mrs.
Norton; laughed demurely at the antics of that elderly figure-of-fun,
"Romeo" Coates, when he took the air in the Quadrant; wondered why
that distinguished veteran, Sir Charles Napier, made a point of
cutting Sir Jasper Nicolls; curtsied to the little Princess Victoria,
then staying at the York Hotel, and turned discreetly aside when the
Duchess de Berri happened to pass; and (since they were not entirely
cloistered) attended, under the watchful eye of a governess, "select"
concerts in the Assembly Rooms (with Catalini and Garsia in the
progr