Before Agnes and her cousins left Mrs. Arlington’s school, Ruth Glenn was so changed for the better, that she would not have been recognized as the same pale, strange girl, who came there three years before.  Her spirits and appetite were good, and there was no longer any complaint of disturbance at night by her room-mates.

It was a sad day in the school when Agnes and her cousins took their final leave, but no one seemed so broken-hearted as poor Ruth Glenn.

“Oh, Agnes,” said she, “who will be the friend to me that you have been?  Who will drag me out with such relentless cruelty?” and here she smiled sadly through her tears, “through rain and sunshine, heat and cold; I am afraid I shall be as bad as ever, for my walks will be so dull without you.”

But Agnes told her she hoped she had now received sufficient benefit from her regular exercise, to be willing to make a little sacrifice, and obtained from her a solemn promise that she would continue the course they had so long pursued together.

Agnes had employed herself most perseveringly while at Mrs. Arlington’s school, in becoming thoroughly acquainted with various branches of education and accomplishments, being fully determined in her own mind no longer to be a burden to her uncle, but to use the means he was so kindly putting into her hands, in enabling her to gain her own support hereafter.  But she had no sooner left the school than other duties claimed her attention, as will presently be seen.

XII.

LEWIE AT SCHOOL.

“The child is father of the man.”—­WORDSWORTH.

Had our friend Lewie heard Mr. Malcolm’s prediction relative to his school experiences, he would have had reason to think him a true prophet.  He came into the school and the play-ground with the same ideas which had been predominant with him ever since his baby-hood; and though he did not, as then, continually say the words, his actions proclaimed as loudly, “Lewie must have his own way!—­Lewie must not be crossed!” He found his school companions not quite so complying as his indulgent mother, and those over whom she had control; and before he had been long in the school, he was known by the various names of “Dictator-General,” “First Consul,” “Great Mogul,” &c., and with these epithets he was greeted whenever he put on any of his dictatorial airs.

These constant insults and impertinences, as he called them, irritated his ungoverned spirit, and in consequence many a school-mate measured his length upon the ground in the most sudden manner, and innumerable were the fights and “rows” which were the result.  The presence of Lewie seemed everywhere the signal of contention and strife, where all had been heretofore, with very few exceptions, harmony and peace; and yet, but for his hasty and impatient temper, Lewie might have been an unparalleled favorite among his schoolmates.