ten years Rose's senior, was absent, and
her assistant was alone at her post, with the whole class in and on her
hands. Rose had already taken off her hat and gloves, and she tried to
compose her ruffled feelings before she began her round of the
drawing-boards, as Mr. St. Foy inspected his easels. The analogy with
its disproportion struck her, and moved her to silent, unsteady
laughter, which she could not restrain, so that it broke out into a
ringing peal at the first enormity in drawing which she came across.

Nobody laughed like that at the Misses Stone's --certainly no
low-voiced, quietly conducted teacher. Rose was further aggrieved and
tormented by the astonished heads privily raised, and the wondering eyes
covertly looking at her. She laughed no more. She went on examining,
commending, correcting, till she was tired out. Surely the morning hours
were endless that day. She was exhausted, not merely by the "smart walk"
from Welby Square, which, taken at Hester Jennings's pace, was always
tiring, as Rose knew to her cost, but also by the turmoil of spirit she
had been in. All the toils, disappointments, and drudgery of the life
which lay before her seemed suddenly to press upon her and overwhelm
her, and before she knew what she was doing she was sobbing behind her
handkerchief. She had one grain of sense left, she turned her back; but
her heaving shoulders and the muffled sound of a "good cry" were not
hidden from the electrified class.

Nobody cried like that at the Misses Stone's, unless it might be to
somebody's pillow in the darkness of the night. For any teacher to cry
in her class was unheard of. Rose conquered herself in less time than it
has taken to recount her weakness, and resumed the lesson with moist
eyes, a reddened nose, and her whole girlish body tingling and smarting
with girlish mortification. All the rest of the morning she seemed to
hear two startling statements repeated alternately and without pause.

"Miss Rose Millar laughed loudly in the middle of her teaching;" and oh!
shame of shames, for the womanly dignity of the last year of Rose's
teens--"Miss Rose Millar cried before the whole class."

Rose had once joined in a girls' play, full of girlish cleverness and
girlish points and hits. No less a personage than Queen Elizabeth was
introduced into it. In the course of the plot great stress was laid on
the fact that the Queen had laughed at Lord Essex's expense, behind his
back. This was do