chool-room also chanced to be just beneath, and all through
school-hours of the long summer days we heard the shrill scoldings and
vicious threats with which Miss Sally fulfilled her mission.

"What ever is a noun?" came floating into our ivied windows a dozen
times a day.

"A noun's a-a-a--a noun's a-a-a--"

"Go to the dormitory, you good-for-nothing, and find out on dry bread
that a noun's a name of anything, like helefunt, hantelope, heagle,
'and, 'eart, ighway."

Miss Sally, with furtive eyes and sly movements, always reminded us by
her speech of the _ci-devant_ butcher we once saw in London, who assured
us he was "heducated at Hoxford."

The refectory had a sunken stone floor, and bare walls enclosing space
enough to feed a hundred monks. It was principally used for drying
clothes in wet weather and for storage of trunks and rough objects. At
one end, where were fewest signs of volcanic upheaval or the passing of
centuries of busy feet, stood always the table at which the pupils took
their scanty fare. No white cloth ever covered this banqueting-board. In
the daytime it was draped in a coarse green baize spotted with ink and
grease. The pupils feasted upon this cloth, each with coarse mug and
plate; at night it was removed to serve as cover for one of the beds!
Once upon a time came an unexpected cold snap in the very heart of the
soft Warwickshire summer. The sheets and blankets upon our beds, as also
the silver and linen of our private table, were all marked with the
pupils' names,--the school prospectus announcing that both linen and
silver must come with each pupil. The supply of blankets, however,
proved insufficient for such unseasonable weather, and, like Oliver
Twist, we asked for "more."

"More" came.

And what, think you, was that "more"?

Nothing more nor less than that self-same inky and buttery baize, which
we indignantly rejected, equally for our own sake as for the sake of
those hapless girls shivering in their defrauded bed that we might be
warm.

At Dothegirls Hall pupils were "taken in and done for," fed, lodged,
taught, for twenty pounds--or _one hundred dollars_--a year. The luxury
of bare comfort could scarcely be expected for that price. Yet Miss
Sally must have made profit out of her starvelings, or Dothegirls Hall
would not have existed. We always observed that a certain punishment was
the usual one for every offence that children are likely to commit.
Almost never a day that we