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Very different from either was the comfortable, pink-cheeked Mrs. Braby, who always carried an apple or a paper of peppermints in her pocket, in case she should meet a child she favoured. In her spare time she was a great reader of novelettes and out of her four shillings [Pg 51] subscribed to Bow Bells and the Family Herald. Once when Laura, coming home from school, happened to overtake her, she enlivened the rest of the journey with the synopsis of a serial she was reading, called His Ice Queen, telling her how the heroine, rich, lovely, and icily virtuous in her white velvet and swansdown, almost broke the heart of the hero by her cool aloofness; then, suddenly melting, threw herself into his arms. But, after all, the plot could not have been quite as simple as that, for there was a villainous colonel in it. 'Oh! I do just about hate that colonel!' Mrs. Braby ejaculated at intervals. She pronounced it 'col-on-el', as spelt, which so worked upon Laura that at last she ventured, 'But don't they call that word "colonel", Mrs. Braby?' Which led to a spelling lesson: 'Col-on-el; that's as plain as the nose on your face. Whatever be you a-thinkin' of, child? They don't seem to teach you much at school these days!' She was distinctly offended and did not offer Laura a peppermint for weeks, which served her right, for she should not have tried to correct her elders.