companion.

"Buck up, old thing!" said the latter. "These very same old exam rods
were laid up in pickle for our forbears, and they survived the ordeal.
The summer's here and the holidays are due, so let's grin and bear it,
and what _does_ it matter if you _do_ mix your futures and
conditionals? As long as it's French and you don't split your
infinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortal
sin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly what
it means."

Seaview House is an establishment for the finishing of young ladies,
which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by means
of dancing and physical culture, and the polishing of the facets of
their intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreign
governesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc. These
latter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot to
each unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory of
the daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at which
they must perforce assist.

And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repousse work on
the outside of the platter.

The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the
two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw,
or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails shine like old cut glass, just
enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they
look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks.
They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave
a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and
gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in
the absence of those in temporary power. In fact the establishment is
quite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of
having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously
married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other
school in Eastbourne.

Which is all as it should be!

"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear
in the book again so that it really does not matter about her
nomenclature. "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was
smiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through the
French papers."

"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason
that we chr