voice and the green spectacles.

"You belong to me," said Miss Wigger, by way of encouragement,
"and I have come to take you away." At those dreadful words,
terror shook little Syd from head to foot. She fell on her knees
with a cry of misery that might have melted the heart of a
savage. "Oh, mamma, mamma, don't leave me behind! What have I
done to deserve it? Oh, pray, pray, pray have some pity on me!"

Her mother was as selfish and as cruel a woman as ever lived. But
even her hard heart felt faintly the influence of the most
intimate and most sacred of all human relationships. Her florid
cheeks turned pale. She hesitated.

Miss Wigger marked (through her own green medium) that moment of
maternal indecision--and saw that it was time to assert her
experience as an instructress of youth.

"Leave it to me," she said to her sister. "You never did know,
and you never will know, how to manage children."

She advanced. The child threw herself shrieking on the floor.
Miss Wigger's long arms caught her up--held her--shook her. "Be
quiet, you imp!" It was needless to tell her to be quiet. Syd's
little curly head sank on the schoolmistress's shoulder. She was
carried into exile without a word or a cry--she had fainted.


10.--The School.