'She has earned my entire approval,' replied Miss Pew, in her oiliest accents. 'She has application.' Dr. Rylance nodded assentingly. 'She has a charming deportment. I know of no girl in the school more thoroughly ladylike. I have never seen her with a collar put on crookedly, or with rough hair. She is a pattern to many of my girls.'
'That is all gratifying to my pride as a father; but I hope she has made progress in her studies.'
Miss Pew coughed gently behind a mittened hand.
'She has not made quite so great an advance as I should have wished. She has talent, no doubt; but it is hardly of a kind that comes into play among other girls. In after-life, perhaps, there may be development. I am sorry to say she is not in our roll-call of honour to-day. She has won no prize.'
'Perhaps she may have hardly thought it worth her while to compete,' said Dr. Rylance, hurt in his own individual pride by the idea that his daughter had missed distinction, just as he would have been hurt if anybody had called one of his pictures a copy, or made light of his blue china. 'With the Rylances it has always been Caesar or nothing.'
'I regret to say that my three most important prizes have been won by a young woman whom I cannot esteem,' said Miss Pew, bristling in her panoply of apple-green, at the thought of Ida Palliser's insolence. 'I hope I shall ever be just, at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling. I shall to-day bestow the first prize for modern languages, for music, and for English history and literature, upon a young person of whose moral character I have a very low opinion.'
'And pray who is this young lady?' asked Dr. Rylance.
'Miss Palliser, the daughter of a half-pay officer residing in the neighbourhood of Dieppe—for very good reasons, no doubt.
'Palliser; yes, I have heard my daughter talk of her. An insolent, ill-bred girl. I have been taught to consider her somewhat a disgrace to your excellent and well-managed school.'
'Her deportment is certainly deplorable,' admitted Miss Pew; 'but the girl has remarkable talents.'