hings off the table or tripped somebody up. Her mother looking
round on the children at their dinner hour would say:

"My _dear_ Bridget, I believe you have grown an inch since yesterday!
How very short those sleeves are for you!" and then there was a general
chuckle at the poor "Bean-stalk."

Then visitors would come, and Bridget with the others would be sent for
to the drawing-room; entering in gawky misery she well knew what
sentence would first strike her ear, and would try furtively to shelter
herself in the background. No use!

"My dear Mrs Watson," the lady would cry, with an expression of amused
pity on her face, "how your daughter Bridget has grown! Why, she is as
tall as my girl of eighteen;" etcetera, etcetera.

Bridget got tired of it at last, and she very much dreaded the arrival
of the new governess, because she felt sure that she should be so
"bullied," as the boys said, about her height and awkwardness. She
would cheerfully have sacrificed several inches of her arms and legs to
be comfortably short, but this could not be managed, so she must make
the best of it.

Miss Tasker arrived. Bobbie saw her first, from an advantageous post he
had taken up for the purpose amongst the boughs of a large beech-tree in
front of the house.

He saw her cab drive up with boxes on the top, and Toto dancing round
and round it on the tips of his toes barking loudly, which I am sorry to
say was his reprehensible manner of receiving strangers. Bobbie parted
the boughs a little more. It was a situation full of interest. Would
she be frightened of Toto? He felt a good deal depended on this as a
sign of her future behaviour.

It appeared, however, that Miss Tasker was not afraid of dogs, for a
tall thin figure presently descended from the cab in the midst of Toto's
wildest demonstrations. Bobbie felt an increased respect for the new
governess, but meanwhile the "others" must at once be told the result of
his observations, and as she entered the house he slipped down from his
perch and scudded quickly away to find them.

From this time Bridget's troubles increased tenfold; Miss Tasker had
severe views about deportment, and besides this her attention was
specially directed by Mrs Watson to Bridget's awkwardness.

"I am particularly anxious," she said, "about my daughter Bridget, and
other lessons are really not of so much importance just now as that she
should learn to hold herself properly. As it is, she is s