Till; M.VN"5E \SD ITS iNMATtS. 435 



iBy lolerable judgment in t!ie choice, and very great care in the 

 wearing, of her clothes, Ruth had contrived to make a neat and re- 

 spectable appearance at so small an expense that she returned home 

 with a wardrobe, modest in its pretensions, it is true, but quite suffi- 

 cient for all her wants and wishes, and, thanks to her industry and 

 good management, in perfect order ; while five pounds of her little 

 earnings still held their place in her purse. The greater part of this 

 sum she expended in lessons from a good French master, with a view 

 to improvement in her pronunciation, and to something like facility 

 in speaking; and after a five weeks' residence in Throgmorton 

 Street, at the end of the Midsummer vacation, during which the 

 whole of the long, light mornings, and much of the days and evenings, 

 iiad been sedulously devoted to study, she entered upon a new situa- 

 tion, differing materially from her former one, and as superior to her 

 expectations as it was agreeable to her wishes. 



Mrs. Somerive's school for young ladies, pleasantly situated at 

 Brompton, was one of the best in the neighbourhood of London, and 

 conducted upon the most liberal system. Though her terms were 

 high, her number of pupils, thirty, was always complete. For these 

 she employed four assistants, and also engaged the attendance of first- 

 rate masters. 



Mrs. Somerive was an accomplished well-educated woman her- 

 self, who had passed the seasons of youth and middle life in the busi- 

 nesss of private tuition ; and, when arrived at an age which rendered 

 a permanent home of her own desii-able, she met with patronage 

 and encouragement from those noblemen and gentlemen who had 

 experienced her worth in their own families, or who had become ac- 

 quainted with her merits in the mansions of their friends. She was 

 observing and candid. She knew that fashion was ever changing 

 and subjecting to its capricious mutability, not merely the adorn- 

 ment of the person, but the course to be pursued in the most import- 

 ant affairs of life, in the preservation of the health and the cultivation 

 of the mind, — that as physicians and medicines, divines and doc- 

 trines grew out of date, as well as milliners and modes, though not 

 with the same periodical regularity as the last named branch, so the 

 accomplishments and teacher of twenty years' standing are obsolete, 

 or nearly so, at the present moment. Wisely, therefore, leaving the 

 detail and the labour to younger and more recently educated assist- 

 ants, she vigilantly superintended the whole during the hours passed 

 in the school-room, managed the domestic arrangements of her house 

 in the intervals, and reserved her evenings to be devoted to the legi- 

 timate relaxations of a cultivated and elegant mind — literary leisure, 

 and social intercourse with a larsfe circle of intelligent and agrreeable 

 friends, whose tastes were similar to her own. 



The head teacher, Mademoiselle Aurelia Doval, was a lively 

 Frenchwoman of thirty, who could barely make herself understood 

 in Knglish, and Mrs. Somerive would have regretted extremely her 

 making any considerable improvement. Mademoiselle's difficulties 

 exercised the young ladies and the other teaciiers, and Mrs. Somerive 

 herself, who had resided three years in France, never conversed with 



2 12 



