CHAPTER TWO.: THE VICAR SEES A GENTLEMAN.

Mr Chute rang a bell and said, “Sh! sh!”

Books were put away, the lady teachers rose, and, with the exception of Miss Burge, moved towards the door, the latter lady glancing at the new mistress, and, apparently pitying her strangeness, seeming disposed to hang back and walk with her; but Hazel Thorne’s attention was too much taken up by her task, and getting her little force of about eight-and-thirty or forty girls two-and-two, she started them for church, herself taking the smallest morsel—to wit, little Jenny Straggalls—under her wing.

Now, the only ways to march forty girls two-and-two to church with anything like order are either to put the two smallest pupils in the front, and