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Miss Arbuthnot’s voice trembled a little as she concluded, for she had grown very fond of her head pupil, and honestly believed that she could have done anything she liked in the way of passing examinations. It had been a great pleasure to the elder lady to have this ardent young disciple always at hand, to sympathise with her plans and to become imbued with her views, nor was Miss Arbuthnot at all unmindful of the honour reflected on the School by the girl’s success. The cause of female education in general, and the South Central High School in particular, were the objects to which Miss Arbuthnot’s life was devoted, and the cause gained no small lustre from the ovation Cecil had received at the Presentation, and the comments which had been made thereon in the various speeches, and which might be looked for from the Press.

The principal’s expectations in this respect were not disappointed. The London dailies remarked on Cecil’s success in a style half-flattering, half-contemptuous, and at greater or less length according to their interest in the subject, and the country papers took up the strain, and carried it on in their several ways. In particular, the ‘Whitcliffe Argus,’ the chief organ of Cecil’s native place, devoted nearly half a column to setting forth, rather late in the day, in a dialect of journalese peculiarly its own, the honours gained by the “daughter of our esteemed fellow-townsman the much respected Vicar of St Barnabas’.” The paper was pounced upon, and the paragraph read aloud in a stentorian voice by one of Cecil’s younger brothers, a particularly rampant specimen of that troublesome race, when the ‘Argus’ was delivered at St Barnabas’ Vicarage. No subject had been further from Cecil’s mind as she sat at the head of the dinner-table, with flushed cheeks and rather dishevelled hair, and a worried look which contrasted sadly with the hopeful aspect she had worn when she bade farewell to Miss Arbuthnot little more than a month before. Mrs Anstruther was away on a visit, and to Cecil had fallen a task sufficient to appal the stoutest heart, that of keeping in order the seven small half-brothers and sisters who sat round the table, and whom no one but their own genial, boisterous Irish mother had ever succeeded in managing.