These boys, as well as Edgar, were giving serious attention to their linen, the care of their hands, and the precise parting of their hair, just then; and a close observer might often have detected them in the act of furtively feeling their upper lips with anxious forefinger in the vain hope of discovering the appearance—­if ever so slight—­of a downy growth thereupon.  For they, as well as he, were making sheep’s eyes at those wonderful visions in golden locks and jetty locks, with brown eyes and blue eyes, with fluttering ribbons and snowy pinafores, known as “Miss Jane Mackenzie’s girls,” who were the inspiration of most of their poet-chum’s invocations of the muse.  The little hymns in praise of the charms of these girls were generally adorned with pen or pencil sketches of the fair charmers themselves.

Poor Miss Jane had a sad time of it.  As the accomplished principal of a choice Young Ladies Boarding and Day School, she enjoyed an enviable position in the politest society in town.  Parents of young ladies under her care congratulated themselves alike upon her strict rule and her learning, her refinement of manners and conversation and her distinguished appearance.  She was tall and stately and in her decorous garb of black silk that could have “stood alone,” and an elegant cap of “real” lace with lavender ribbons softening the precise waves of her iron-grey hair, she made a most impressive figure—­one that would have inspired with profound respect any male creature living saving that incorrigible non-respecter of persons and personages, especially of lady principals—­the Boy.  For the “forming” of young ladies, Miss Jane had a positive forte, but the genus boy was an unknown quantity to her, and worse—­he was a positive terror.  For one of them to invade the sacred precincts of her school, or its grounds, seemed to her maiden soul rank sacrilege; to scale her garden wall after dark for the purpose of attaching a letter to a string let down from a window to receive it, was nothing short of criminal.  For one of her girls to receive offerings of candy and original poetry—­love poetry—­from one of these terrible creatures; such an offence was unspeakably shocking.

Yet discovery of such offences happened often enough to give her repeated shocks, and to confirm her in her belief in the total depravity, the hopeless wickedness of all boys—­especially of John Allan’s adopted son.

In spite of her vigilance, Edgar Poe found the means to outwit her, and to transmit his effusions, without difficulty, to her fair charges, who with tresses primly parted and braided and meek eyes bent in evident absorption upon their books, were the very pictures of docile obedience, and bore in their outward looks no hint of the guilty consciences that should, by rights, have been destroying their peace.

Miss Jane was the sister of Mr. Mackenzie who had adopted little Rosalie Poe.  Rosalie was, at Miss Jane’s invitation, a pupil in the school, but (ungrateful girl that she was) she became, at the suggestion of her handsome and charming brother Edgar, whom she adored, the willing messenger of Dan Cupid, and furthered much secret and sentimental correspondence between the innocent-seeming girls and the young scamps who admired them.