At fourteen, being still incapable of adding two and two together, the Mad Hatter had been told off into an idiot's class by herself for arithmetic; and Miss Quincey, because she was so meek and patient and persistent, was told off to teach her.

The child, a queer, ugly little pariah, half-Jew, half-Cockney, held all other girls in abhorrence, and was avoided by them with an equal loathing.

She seemed to have attached herself to the unpopular teacher out of sheer perversity and malignant contempt of public opinion.
Abandoned in their corner, with their heads bent together over the sums, the two outsiders clung to each other in a common misery and isolation.
Miss Quincey was well aware that she was of no account at St.Sidwell's.
She supposed that it was because she had never taken her degree.

To be sure she had never tried to take it; but it was by no means certain that she could have taken it if she had tried.

She was not clever; Louisa had carried off all the brains and the honours of the family.