I always pitied Jill for having to spend her days in such a dull room; the furniture was ugly, and the windows looked out on a dismal back-yard, with the high walls of the opposite building.  Aunt Philippa, who was a rigid disciplinarian with her young daughter, always said that she had chosen the room ’because Jill would have nothing to distract her from her studies.’  The poor child would put up her shoulders at this remark and draw down the corners of her lips in a way that would make Aunt Philippa scold her for her awkwardness.  ’You need not make yourself plainer than you are, Jocelyn,’ she would say severely; for Jill’s awkward manners troubled her motherly vanity.  ’What is the good of all the dancing and drilling and riding with Captain Cooper if you will persist in hunching your shoulders as though you were deformed?  Fraeulein has been complaining of you this morning; she seems excessively displeased at your carelessness and want of application.’  ’I know I shall get stupid, shut up in that dull hole with Fraeulein,’ Jill would say passionately, after one of these maternal lectures.  Aunt Philippa was really very fond of Jill; but she misunderstood the girl’s nature.  The system had answered so well with Sara that she could not be brought to comprehend why it should fail with her other child.  Sara had grown up blooming and radiant in spite of the depressing influences of Fraeulein and the dull, narrow schoolroom.  Her music and singing masters had come to her there.  Little Madame Blanchard had chirped to her in Parisian accent for the hour together over les modes and le beau Paris.  Sara had danced and drilled with the other young ladies at Miss Dugald’s select establishment, and had joined them at the riding-school or in the cavalcade under Captain Cooper.

Sara had worn her bondage lightly, and had fascinated even grim old Herr Schliefer.  Her tact and easy adaptability had kept Fraeulein Sonnenschein in a state of tepid good-humour.  Every one, even cross old Draper, idolised Sara for her beauty and sprightly ways.  When Aunt Philippa declared her education finished, she tripped out of the schoolroom as happily as possible to take possession of her grand new bedroom and the little boudoir, where all her girlish treasures were arranged.  She had not been the least impatient for her day of freedom:  it would all come in good time.  When the sceptre was put into her hands and her sovereignty acknowledged by the whole household, the young princess was not a bit excited.  She put on her court dress and made her courtesy to her majesty with the same charming unconsciousness and ease of manner.  No wonder people were charmed with such good-humour and freshness.  If the glossy hair did not cover a large amount of brains, no one found fault with her for that.

Jill raged and stormed fiercely under Sara’s light-hearted philosophy; when her sister told her to be patient under Fraeulein’s yoke, that a good time was coming for her also, when lesson-books would be shut up, and Herr Schliefer would cease to scatter snuff on the carpet as he sat drumming with his fingers on the keyboard and grunting out brief interjections of impatience.