sion), Miss Carey took it away
and washed it, while Colney went around looking scared and miserable in
a queer flannel gown of a pinkish shade. Report said it had once been
brown, but that the colour had been changed by the fumes of something or
other, no one knew what. Sometimes she had buttons on frock and apron,
more often not. Periodically, Miss Carey or the Owls descended upon her,
and sewed on her buttons and mended her up generally; and she was very
grateful, and said how nice it was to have buttons. But she soon pulled
them off again, because she never had time to do anything but tear her
clothes off when she went to bed, and drag them on again when she got
up. When a button flew off, she pinned the place over, if a pin was in
sight; if not, she went without; it made no difference to her, and she
was not conscious of it in five minutes. Miss Russell, and most of the
teachers, were very tender with Colney. She was poor, and meant to work
her way through college; even now she paid part of her schooling by
stuffing birds and setting up skeletons for one of the college
professors. If she did not kill herself or somebody else before she
graduated, Miss Russell looked forward to a distinguished career for the
tenant of Bedlam; so, as I have said, she was tender and patient with
her; and good Miss Carey mended her when she could, and saw that she
remembered to eat her dinner, and Miss Boyle and Miss Mink rejoiced over
her, and Miss Cortlandt led her gently through English literature,
giving her Walton and Bacon and all the scientific men of letters that
she could find. Only one teacher failed to do her best to smooth poor
Colney's path through school; that was Miss Pugsley. Rhetoric was simply
an empty noise to the girl. She never by any chance knew a lesson, and
Miss Pugsley lashed her with so cruel a tongue that Peggy used to ache
and smart for her as well as for herself, and would get hold of Colney's
hand and hold it and squeeze it, growing red the while with pity and
anger. But Colney never noticed it half as much as Peggy did; she used
to look at the angry teacher for a few minutes in an abstracted kind of
way, and then retire within herself and make imaginary experiments.
This was what happened on the dreadful day when Miss Pugsley said:

"The subject of this sentence is _I_. How do we go to work to form the
predicate, Miss Hatch?"

Cornelia started, but replied, instantly:

"By mixing one part hydrogen with t