“Have you any pretty flowers in the woods about here?” she asked.

“Oh, lots!” answered Rosa; “yellow flowers, and blue flowers, and white flowers.”

“Then if you would like to learn something of Botany, so as to know the names of all these beautiful flowers, we will take many pleasant rambles in the woods, and gather the lovely wild flowers, and I will teach you how to press them.”

“But we haven’t got any Botany books,” said little Jessie.

“Oh, I think we shall not need any books, for all the Botany I shall teach you, Jessie; and if we do, we will take the leaves of the flowers for the leaves of the books, and the flowers themselves for the pictures.  Do you not think we can make beautiful books that way?  Jessie, can you read?”

“I can!” said Rosa, while Jessie hung her curly head.

“And can you write, Rosa?”

“No.  I can make straight marks,” answered Rosa.

“And what can you do, Master Frank?”

“Oh, Frank doesn’t know anything?” said Jessie.  “He did know his ABC’s once, but he’s forgot them all.”

“Take care, Miss Jessie, that he does not read before you,” said Agnes.  “Your papa says we are to take the west wing for our school-room; you must show me where it is, and after a day or to get in order, and to make each other’s acquaintance, we will begin school in earnest.”

The next morning Agnes took the toilettes of her two little room-mates under her care, and when they appeared at the breakfast-table, the rest of the family hardly knew them, they looked so tidy and sweet.  And poor Tiney, who gazed with astonishment at her two little sisters, made her appearance at Agnes’ door soon after breakfast, to ask “if she wouldn’t make her look nice too.”

Agnes found so little to sympathise with, and took so little pleasure in the society of the ladies of the Fairland family, that she longed for her school to begin, that she might have useful occupation for her thoughts and time.  On the appointed morning therefore, she was well pleased to meet her little pupils in the pleasant little room in the “west wing,” and to begin in earnest her labors as a teacher.  Such a pile of soiled, well-thumbed, and dogs-eared books, as the children produced, Agnes had never seen together, and on opening them she found that the young Fairland’s had been exercising their taste for the fine arts, by daubing all the pictures from a six-penny paint-box.

“Now, my dear children,” said she, “the first thing we shall do every morning, will be to read in the Bible; but I do not see any Bible or Testament among your books; I suppose you each own one, do you not?”

If Agnes had been a little longer in the family of Mr. Fairland, perhaps she would not have asked this question; for she soon found that she had come into a family of as complete heathens, as she would have found if she had gone to be governess among the Hindoos.  There was a “family Bible” in the house to be sure, but the only use to which it had ever been applied, was that of registering the births of the family, and the testimony it bore proved so exceedingly disagreeable to the Misses Fairland, that as Rosa has informed us, they took the liberty one day of erasing it.