le to Letty. All her nightmares
were connected with it. She was a podgy, dull-looking girl, fat and pale
and awkward, and her mother made her wear cheap shoes that creaked.
"Miss Estcourt has new shoes on again," the dancing master would say,
gently smiling, when Letty was well on her way round the room, cut off
from all human aid, conscious of every inch of her body, desperately
trying to be graceful. And everybody tittered except the victim. "You
know, Miss Estcourt," he would say at every second lesson, "there is a
saying that creaking shoes have not been paid for. I beg your pardon?
Did you say they had been paid for? Miss Estcourt says she does not
know." And he would turn to his other pupils with a shrug and a gentle
smile.

On Saturday afternoons there were the Popular Concerts at St. James's
Hall to be gone to--Susie regarded them as educational, and
subscribed--and Letty, who always had chilblains on her feet in winter,
suffered tortures trying not to rub them; for as surely as she moved one
foot and began to rub the other with it, however gently, fierce
enthusiasts in the row in front would turn on her--old gentlemen of an
otherwise humane appearance, rapt ladies with eyeglasses and loose
clothes--and sh-sh her with furious hissings into immobility. "Oh,
Letty, _try_ and sit still," Miss Leech, who dreaded publicity, would
implore in a whisper; but who that has not had them can know the torture
of chilblains inside thick boots, where they cannot be got at? As soon
as the chilblains went, the Saturday concerts left off, and it seemed as
though Fate had nothing better to do than to be spiteful.

It was indeed a dreadful thing, thought Letty, as she bent over the map
of Germany, to be young and to have to be made clever at all costs. Here
was her aunt even, her pretty, kind aunt, asking her geography questions
at seven o'clock at night, when she thought that she had really done
with lessons for one more day, and had been so much enjoying Leechy's
description of the only man she ever loved, while she comfortably
toasted cheese at the schoolroom fire. Anna, who spent such lofty hours
of spiritual exaltation at St. Paul's, and came away with her soul
melted into pity for the unhappy, and yearned with her whole being to
help them, never thought of Letty as a creature who might perhaps be
helped to cheerfulness with a little trouble. Letty was too close at
hand; and enthusiastic philanthropists, casting about for obj