always be a very long time before that happened again with that child. During class, whilst Frau Alsberg or one of the governesses was giving lessons, no child might speak unless with permission. When a question was asked, each child who knew or thought she knew the answer, held up her hand, but those who did not know were called upon first, and then one of the others would be questioned. However eager the children were to answer, they never did so until they had permission, for they knew they would only be punished; but they would testify the great desire they had to speak by much energy in the way they held up their arms. The German girls were very good and kind to us, and Muriel and I soon began to make friendships "in the school," and our life was a delightful mixture of constant little pleasures, and entirely new and interesting lessons. Frau Alsberg we very speedily grew to love as we had scarcely ever loved any one before; even the children in the school loved her devotedly, and would have done for her what they would have done for no one else, for she had something about her which, more than any one I ever knew, gathered to herself all the love of those around her. No wonder that we said to ourselves that our lines had fallen in pleasant places; no wonder that we wrote home wonderful accounts of our German school life, so that our girl friends in England envied us, and our younger sisters, and even some of our brothers, thought that they should like to come to school at Frau Alsberg's. But we had not been there very long before a most wonderful, bewildering, and astonishing event occurred, and this was the Carnival, which took place about six weeks before Easter, and Easter fell early that year. It filled us with amazement, and we each wrote home such long and varied accounts of it, that our younger brothers and sisters must have been both edified and puzzled over our letters. CHAPTER III. "And she spake such good thoughts, natural as if she always thought them NEARLY all the men in the town, both workmen and gentlemen, were dressed up and disguised in all sorts of absurd clothes, with dogs', donkeys', and pigs' heads, about three times the size of those they had to cover. Some of them carried odd things in their hands, with which they played all sorts of tricks. After a walk, which was one ceaseless terror and fright, one or two of us boarders arrived, with Frau Alsberg, at a balcony overlooking the market-place, and from this elevated post we had a wide view in each direction of all the uncouth forms and strange monsters which were crowding about either singly or in hideous processions. Not until we were safely in this balcony, however, could we enjoy ourselves; and even there we were haunted by the remembrance that the walk home was looming before us, for these terrible creatures every now and then would come rushing and dancing, or pretending to brush specks of dust from our dresses with brooms or spoons, or anything they happened to have. In these disguises it was impossible to recognise our friends; but we soon found out a way of discerning gentlemen from common men, and that was by their boots; there was a great difference in the neat, well-fitting boots of some, and the great rough ones or wooden shoes of others. We had not been long in our balcony when we observed a man approaching, all by himself, and got up in a light, pale-looking suit of nankeen, with white waistcoat, and a tall white hat stuck so decidedly at the back of his head that it was a marvel how he kept it on; an eyeglass was in one eye, and his arms hanging helplessly down by his sides; and, to complete his description, a huge plaid shawl was twisted round him under one arm, and brought up and tied on the other shoulder; but our shout of laughter at his appearance was stayed by the information that this was the "Englishman.” He came and stood under our balcony, wherein he knew that there were some English girls, and, taking off his hat, he announced in peculiar English, “I am zee Lord Pudding!" The spectators in other balconies near us were in a state of exquisite delight, and watched us with much amusement; nor were the German girls of our party less delighted; and Betty Schlun cried, "Look at your English gentleman-look, look what a sheep's head he is!" I told her that we had not such an expression as sheep's head in our language, and if such a man as the one before us had ever been seen in England, he must assuredly have been a German. The Carnival lasted several days, and on the third evening we girls determined to have a small Carnival on our own account at home, and the big bed-room became the scene of a merry, noisy, romping party of amateur actors dressing up. And, as one always finds in such cases, it is the dressing up and the amusement over absurd contrivances which constitutes the chief fun and enjoyment of the affair; and long before we had emerged from the dressing-room as "ready," we were almost imbecile from laughter. Muriel's appearance was something fearful; we had padded her with cushions and pillows to a huge size, and over this she had a very scanty dress on. She wore a false nose, and spectacles cut out of black paper, and in her hand she carried the biggest red cotton umbrella ever seen. Where this umbrella had originally come from, nobody seemed to know, but it had become a "property of the house," used for dressing up by generation after generation of girls. We had had much trouble and excitement over the dressing up of Betty Schlun, and Hildegarde had put herself very much out of temper on the subject, assuring Betty over and over again that it was a design of the "English" to make a laughing-stock of the Germans, and she begged Betty not to allow herself to be made ridiculous, and thereby gratify the conceited English; nor did the assurances that all the English were going to make themselves as supremely absurd as they possibly could, make any impression on her; she only looked upon Betty as a poor, |