enlarge to their fullest extent, and remain fixed. The young men, marvelling, turn to ascertain the cause of my petrification.
"If you please, Miss Helen and Miss Dolly," says Balaam's Ass, appearing in our midst, "your pa says you're to go home and go to bed directly!"
She might have whispered. . . . I do not look at Bobbie or George. I look nowhere; I see nothing. Why does not the earth open and swallow us up? Somehow, I do not know how, to this day, we get ourselves away.
"How dare he do it?" I say, as I climb the steep hill that leads to our abode, with bitter tears raining down my burnt cheeks, hot anger and outraged pride scorching my heart, "just as we were so happy, Dolly! How shall I ever look one of them in the face again!" And I am fourteen years old! Truly "pride goes before a fall!"
CHAPTER XII.
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion."
My last little escapade has cost me dear. Not only have I been condemned to a week's imprisonment in the house and grounds, but the edict has gone forth that I shall be sent to school without loss of time. I have long ago wept my eyes dry. I do not think that I shall ever be able to cry any more, not even when I find myself set down in the midst of a crowd of nasty, spiteful, odious, chattering girls; if there were a few boys I would not mind, but to have nothing but petticoat company for five months, will, I am certain, drive me mad. If Dolly were coming, even, it would not be so bad, we could at least hold together and talk about home; I should not be so miserably lonely then; but no such luck, Amber-
