opening the door, she discovered, to her horror and amazement,
that all four girls were out of bed--were dressed in
brilliantly-fantastic costumes, representing the four grotesque
"Queens" of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, familiar to us
all on the pack of cards--and were dancing a quadrille, in which
Jessie sustained the character of The Queen of Hearts. The next
morning's investigation disclosed that Miss Yelverton had
smuggled the dresses into the school, and had amused herself by
giving an impromptu fancy ball to her companions, in imitation of
an entertainment of the same kind at which she had figured in a
"court-card" quadrille at her aunt's country house.

The dresses were instantly confiscated and the necessary
punishment promptly administered; but the remembrance of Jessie's
extraordinary outrage on bedroom discipline lasted long enough to
become one of the traditions of the school, and she and her
sister-culprits were thenceforth hailed as the "queens" of the
four "suites" by their class-companions whenever the mistress's
back was turned, Whatever might have become of the nicknames thus
employed in relation to the other three girls, such a mock title
as The Queen of Hearts was too appropriately descriptive of the
natural charm of Jessie's character, as well as of the adventure
in which she had taken the lead, not to rise naturally to the
lips of every one who knew her. It followed her to her aunt's
house--it came to be as habitually and familiarly connected with
her, among her friends of all ages, as if it had been formally
inscribed on her baptismal register; and it has stolen its way
into these pages because it falls from my pen naturally and
inevitably, exactly as it often falls from my lips in real life.