“Ladies, ladies,” cries a new voice, at the sound of which the leader is seen to sit even better than before, “this is not a church, that you should go to sleep while you are taught truth!  Attend to your instructor!  Keep up when he tells you.  Make your movements with energy.  You tire him; you tire me; you tire the good horses! how then, rouse yourselves!  Prepare to trot!  Trot!” And away go the horses, for it is not every hour that they hear the strong voice which means that instant obedience must be rendered.  “Keep up! keep up!” cries your teacher.  “Come in!” says your own guide, and then pauses himself, to urge one of the beginners behind you, and for a minute or two the orders follow one another thick and fast, the three men working together, each seeming to have eyes for each pupil, and to divine the intentions of his coadjutors, and then comes the order, “Prepare to whoa!  Whoa! and the master sits down on the mounting-stand, and frees his mind on the subject of corners, a topic which you begin to think is inexhaustible.

“Please show these ladies how to go into a corner,” he concludes, and your teacher does so, executing the movement so marvelously that it seems as if he would have no difficulty in performing it in any passageway through which his horse could walk in a straight line.  The whole class gazes enviously, to be brought to the proper frame of mind by a sharp expostulatory fire of:  “Keep your distance!  Forward!” with about four times as many warnings addressed to the society young lady as to all the others; and then suddenly, unexpectedly, the clock strikes and the lesson is over.

The society young lady dresses herself with much precision and deliberation, and announces that she will never, no, never! never so long as she lives, come again; and in spite of Nell’s attempts to quiet her, she repeats the statement in the reception room, in the master’s hearing, aiming it straight at his quiet countenance.

“No?” he says, not so much disturbed as she could desire.  “You should not despair, you will learn in time.”

“I don’t despair,” she answers; “but I know something, and I will not be treated as if I knew nothing.”

“An, you know something,” he repeats, in an interested way.  “But what you do not know, my young lady, is how little that something is!  This is a school; you came here to be taught.  I will not cheat you by not teaching you.”

“And it is no way to teach!  Three men ordering a class at once!”

“Ah, it is ‘no way to teach’!  Now, it is I who am taking a lesson from you.  I am greatly obliged, but I must keep to my own old way.  It may be wrong—­for you, my young lady—­but it has made soldiers to ride, and little girls, and other young ladies, and I am content.  And these others?  Are they not coming any more?”

And every one of those cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, “Y-yes, sir, but you do s-scold a little hard.”