e-manager--the girl who had been so
lifeless and incapable of looking after herself when she first came
among them that they had styled her the baby of the establishment!

Miss Lascelles, who was deeply interested in the play, both in her
highly-finished scholarship, and for the credit of Thirlwall Hall,
was electrified when she discovered the efficient coadjutor whom
the performers had found. "I am afraid there has been a mistake
made, and time lost," she said to herself ruefully. "How could I be
so shortsighted, when there is the making of the finest scholar in
the Hall in Miss Millar, who threatened to hang so heavily on my hands
that I was fain to send her to play with our generous 'Barbarian.'
What discrimination, what taste and feeling with regard to the
selection and fit declamation of these passages which we were doubtful
whether to retain or reject, or what to do with them! With what pretty
girlish shyness and timidity she made the suggestions! Nothing but her
passionate love of the subject, and her jealousy for its honour, as it
were, with her intense craving to have it fitly expressed, would have
induced her to come forward. I should like to hear what Professor
Hennessy," naming a great name among classical authorities, "thinks
of this young girl's interpretation of several parts of the play when
he comes to hear them. I should like to introduce Miss Millar to him
if she were not so frightened, and if she had taken the place which
she ought to have held to begin with. It is too late to rectify the
mistake and set her to work this term, and she had much better not go
in for the Markham scholarship which her father spoke of--that would
be worse than useless. But we'll turn over a new leaf next term. After
all, she is very young; and I suppose it is of no great consequence
that she has wasted her first half. Her family are professional
people, and these are generally well off." (Miss Lascelles was the
portionless daughter of the impecunious younger son of a poor
nobleman.)

When the play was performed nearly all the classical scholars of St.
Ambrose's--and what was a man doing at St. Ambrose's if he were not a
classical scholar, unless, to be sure, he happened to be a philosopher
of the first water, or a profound expounder of Anglo-Saxon, or a
strangely and wonderfully informed pundit?--came with their wives
and daughters, and graciously applauded the daring deed.

As for Keturah Vanhansen, she wore her _rivi