he. "I must be _very_ young; but if they
punish me this way, I shall _get_ wrinkles. I'm sure I shall, because
I'm so _miserable_!"

I am afraid poor Bab often deserved to be punished. She was idle at her
lessons and extremely saucy, and she was a quaint little thing, so that
sometimes she seemed to be impertinent when she really did not intend
it, though I must own that at other times she _did_ intend it as much as
any other young lady seven years old possibly could. On the present
occasion, when her governess scolded her for her idleness, she said she
had not been idle, but had been making a charade; and then she began
dancing about the schoolroom, and jumping on tables and chairs, and all
the time shouting loudly, "Selina, guess--this is the charade--guess,
Selina, guess! My first is what nobody should be, my second is what
everybody should eat, and my whole is--oh,--Strict-ham, Strict-ham. Why
don't you guess, Selina? Oh, why don't you?"

Miss Strictham marched her off in dire disgrace. The picnickers would be
absent four hours, and during that time Bab was not to quit the
schoolroom. Maria, the housemaid, would bring her dinner, and nurse
would look in on her now and then, but she was not to have the younger
children with her. She was to be a solitary prisoner in solitary
confinement, and she was on her parole. Her aunt made her promise not to
leave the room, and having done so, was content, for, as she said to
Uncle Jem in rather a complaining way, "It is a very odd thing that Bab
never tells a falsehood or breaks her promise. Robert and Selina both do
sometimes, and yet they are so much better children. Isn't it odd?"

Having enjoyed a good roar, and feeling wonderfully refreshed
thereby--for Bab was too proud to have shed a tear in Aunt Anastasia's
and Miss Strictham's presence--the poor little thing got hold of her
lesson-books and prepared to learn a French verb, some questions and
answers in English history, and to do a sum in compound addition, and
write a copy.

"As if it mattered to such a little thing as I am whether King John was
a good man or a bad one, or what sort of a thing Magna Charta was!" said
she, reproachfully, to her book; "as if it mattered to _any_body,
indeed, when it was such an extremely long time ago! Eleven hundred and
ninety-nine he came to the throne; and who'd care if he had never been
born or never come to the throne? And _we're_ not barons, and _we've_
not got Magna Charta; and