Stories for Helen

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Leslie Eliza. Stories for Helen

THE TELL-TALE

THE BOARDING-SCHOOL FEAST

THE WEEK OF IDLENESS

MADELINE MALCOLM

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IT is a very common subject of complaint with boarding-school children (and there is often sufficient foundation for it) that they are too much restricted in their food, and that their diet is not only inferior in quality to what it ought to be, but frequently deficient in quantity also. There was certainly, however, no cause for any dissatisfaction of this sort at Mrs. Middleton's boarding-school, in Philadelphia. The table was in every respect excellent; and a basket of bread or biscuit, and sometimes of gingerbread, was handed round to all the pupils, every morning at eleven o'clock. Mrs. Middleton's young ladies were strangers to the common boarding-school practice of coaxing or bribing the servants to procure them cakes and tarts from the confectioners; for the table was sufficiently supplied with those articles, made in such a manner as to be agreeable to the taste without endangering the health; and they were every day allowed some sort of fruit, of the best quality the market could furnish.

At last, a young lady named Henrietta Harwood became a member of Mrs. Middleton's seminary. Miss Harwood had been for several years a pupil of one of those too numerous establishments, where the comfort of the children is sacrificed to the vanity of a governess, who rests her claims to encouragement principally on the merits of elegantly furnished parlours, an expensive style of dress, frequent evening parties, and occasional balls. In schools where outward show is the leading principle, the internal economy is generally conducted on the most parsimonious plan, and while the masters (who attend only at certain hours) are such as are considered the most fashionable, the female teachers that live in the house, are too often vulgar girls obtained at a low salary, and who frequently are in league with the elder pupils in ridiculing and plotting against the governess.

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Henrietta. Well, we must take an opportunity when Miss Loxley is not at home. Mrs. Middleton permits her to go out whenever she requests it. She does not keep her so closely confined as Madame Disette did poor Benson.

Miss Scott. Mrs. Middleton has so much reliance on her elder pupils, that she is not afraid to trust us sometimes without Miss Loxley. And we, certainly, have never yet abused her confidence.

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