"Yoicks! Here 's a kettle of fish!" ejaculated the commissary.
"What's wrong?"

"Janice, do as thou art told, or go to thy room," ordered
the mother.

The girl opened her lips as if about to protest, but courage
failed her, and she hurriedly left the parlour, and flying to her
room, she threw herself on the bed and wept out her sense of
wrong on her pillow.

"I never would have, if he had n't--and it was n't I asked
him to the house--and he took a mean advantage--and he
was n't scolded for it, nor shamed to all the people--and now
they show him every honour, though he--though for a year it
was held up to me."

Presently the girl became conscious of the clatter of knives
and forks on plates in the room beneath her, and of an accompaniment
of cheerful voices and laughter. Far from lessening
her woe, they only served to intensify it, till finally she rose in
a kind of desperation, wishing only to escape from the merry
sounds. "I'll go and see Clarion and Joggles and Jumper,"
she thought. "They love me, and--and they don't punish
me when others are to blame."

Not choosing to pass through the kitchen, where the dragoons
would probably be sitting, she stole out of the front door,
without wrap or calash, and in an instant was almost swept off