Milly Darrell
listened with most unaffected sympathy.

Early the next day my new life began in real earnest. Miss Susan
Bagshot did not allow me to waste my time in idleness until the
arrival of my pupils. She gave me a pile of exercises to correct,
and some difficult needlework to finish; and I found I had indeed a
sharp taskmistress in this blighted lady.

'Girls of your age are so incorrigibly idle,' she said; 'but I must
give you to understand at once that you will have no time for
dawdling at Albury Lodge. The first bell rings a quarter before six,
and at a quarter past I shall expect to see you in the schoolroom.
You will superintend the younger pupils' pianoforte practice from
that time till eight o'clock, at which hour we breakfast. From nine
till twelve you will take the second division of the second class
for English, according to the routine arranged by me, which you had
better copy from a paper I will lend you for that purpose. After
dinner you will take the same class for two hours' reading until
four; from four to five you will superintend the needle-work class.
Your evenings--with the exception of the careful correction of all
the day's exercises--will be your own. I hope you have a sincere love
of your vocation, Miss Crofton.'

I said I hoped I should grow to like my work as I became accustomed
to it. I had never yet tried teaching, except with my young sister
and brothers. My hear sank as I remembered our free-and-easy studies
in the sunny parlour at home, or out in the garden under the pink
and white hawthorns sometimes on balmy mornings in the early summer.

Miss Susan shook her head doubtfully.

'Unless you have a love of your vocation you will never succeed,
Miss Crofton,' she said solemnly.

I freely confess that this love she spoke of never came to me. I
tried to do my duty, and I endured all the hardships of my life in,
I hope, a cheerful spirit. But the dry monotony of the studies had
no element of pleasantness, and I used to wonder how Miss Susan
could derive pleasure--as it was evident she did--from the exercise of
her authority over those hapless scholars who had the misfortune to
belong to her class. Day after day they heard the same lectures,
listened submissively to the same reproofs, and toiled on upon that
bleak bare high-road to learning, along which it was her delight to
drive them. Nothing like a flower brightened their weary way--it was
all alike dust and barrenness; but the