stily away, when she was suddenly, in
nautical phrase, 'brought to' by a subdued shriek from Miss Monflathers.

'She has passed me without any salute!' cried the governess, raising
her eyes to the sky. 'She has actually passed me without the slightest
acknowledgment of my presence!'

The young lady turned and curtsied. Nell could see that she raised her
dark eyes to the face of her superior, and that their expression, and
that of her whole attitude for the instant, was one of mute but most
touching appeal against this ungenerous usage. Miss Monflathers only
tossed her head in reply, and the great gate closed upon a bursting
heart.

'As for you, you wicked child,' said Miss Monflathers, turning to Nell,
'tell your mistress that if she presumes to take the liberty of sending
to me any more, I will write to the legislative authorities and have
her put in the stocks, or compelled to do penance in a white sheet; and
you may depend upon it that you shall certainly experience the
treadmill if you dare to come here again. Now ladies, on.'

The procession filed off, two and two, with the books and parasols, and
Miss Monflathers, calling the Baronet's daughter to walk with her and
smooth her ruffled feelings, discarded the two teachers--who by this
time had exchanged their smiles for looks of sympathy--and left them
to bring up the rear, and hate each other a little more for being
obliged to walk together.

CHAPTER 32

Mrs Jarley's wrath on first learning that she had been threatened with
the indignity of Stocks and Penance, passed all description. The
genuine and only Jarley exposed to public scorn, jeered by children,
and flouted by beadles! The delight of the Nobility and Gentry shorn
of a bonnet which a Lady Mayoress might have sighed to wear, and
arrayed in a white sheet as a spectacle of mortification and humility!
And Miss Monflathers, the audacious creature who presumed, even in the
dimmest and remotest distance of her imagination, to conjure up the
degrading picture, 'I am a'most inclined,' said Mrs Jarley, bursting
with the fulness of her anger and the weakness of her means of revenge,
'to turn atheist when I think of it!'

But instead of adopting this course of retaliation, Mrs Jarley, on
second thoughts, brought out the suspicious bottle, and ordering
glasses to be set forth upon her favourite drum, and sinking into a
chair behind it, called her satellites about her, and to them several
times reco