I have not enumerated half the vexatious propensities of my pupils,
or half the troubles resulting from my heavy responsibilities, for
fear of trespassing too much upon the reader's patience; as,
perhaps, I have already done; but my design in writing the few last
pages was not to amuse, but to benefit those whom it might concern;
he that has no interest in such matters will doubtless have skipped
them over with a cursory glance, and, perhaps, a malediction
against the prolixity of the writer; but if a parent has,
therefrom, gathered any useful hint, or an unfortunate governess
received thereby the slightest benefit, I am well rewarded for my
pains.

To avoid trouble and confusion, I have taken my pupils one by one,
and discussed their various qualities; but this can give no
adequate idea of being worried by the whole three together; when,
as was often the case, all were determined to 'be naughty, and to
tease Miss Grey, and put her in a passion.'

Sometimes, on such occasions, the thought has suddenly occurred to
me--'If they could see me now!' meaning, of course, my friends at
home; and the idea of how they would pity me has made me pity
myself--so greatly that I have had the utmost difficulty to
restrain my tears: but I have restrained them, till my little
tormentors were gone to dessert, or cleared off to bed (my only
prospects of deliverance), and then, in all the bliss of solitude,
I have given myself up to the luxury of an unrestricted burst of
weeping. But this was a weakness I did not often indulge: my
employments were too numerous, my leisure moments too precious, to
admit of much time being given to fruitless lamentations.