something in a tumbler. It was
half full and looked horrid! I tell you, I shook in my stocking feet,
and I began to straighten up, and whimpered,--I could have cried right
out, it looked so awful, so _awful_, but I only whimpered,--'I'm
better, a good deal, Miss Palmer; I'll go to my room, and if I can't
study, I'll go to bed.'

"'You must take this first. I don't like to send you away in such
severe pain, particularly as you couldn't find the matron, without
doing something to help you. You know I am responsible to your parents
for your health!'

"'My parents never give me any medicine,' I snarled, for I was getting
ruxy by this time.

"'Perhaps you would have enjoyed better health if they had, and would
have been less liable to these sudden attacks of pain,' she said; and,
girls, if you can believe it, when I looked up in her face, there she
was in a broad grin, holding the tumbler, too, close to my mouth.

"'I'm--I'm lots better,' I whimpered.

"'I'm glad to hear it,' the ugly old thing said; 'but I must insist on
your drinking this at once, or I shall have to take you down to Miss
Ashton's room; she is more responsible than I am, and I am sure would
not pass any neglect on my part over.'

"By this time the tumbler touched my lips, and, girls, I was so sure
that she would take me down to Miss Ashton,--and there is no such
thing as keeping anything away from her, for you know how she hates
what she calls a 'prevarication,'--that I just had my choice, to drink
that nasty stuff, or to betray the Demosthenic Club, or to tell a fib,
and have my walking-ticket given me, so I opened my mouth wide, and
swallowed one swallow, then was going to turn away my head, but Miss
Palmer held the tumbler tight to my lips, as I have seen people do to
children when they were giving castor oil. I took another, and tried
again, but there was the tumbler tighter still, so down with it I
went, and--and--she had no mercy; she made me drain it to the last
drop; then she put it on the table, and said,--

"'Now, Lucy, you can go to your room; I think you will feel well
enough to study your lesson, but if you do not, come back in a
half-hour, and I will give you another, and a stronger dose. Put on
your boots before you go; you may take cold on the bare floors, in
your condition. Good-night.'

"She opened her door, and held it open in the politest way until I had
passed out, then I heard her laugh--laugh out loud, a real merry,
ringing