CHAPTER IV.
"_'Tis an old tale, and often told._" SIR WALTER SCOTT That evening some people who were near them were talking about it, and that made Tom ask Clara if her friend was in the habit of doing startling things.
"Should you think so to look at her now ?" queried Clara, looking across the room to where Miss Ercildoune stood.
"Indeed I shouldn't," Tom replied; and indeed no one would who saw her then.

"She's as sweet as a sugar-plum," he added, as he continued to look.

"What does she mean by getting off such rampant discourses?
She never wrote them herself,--don't tell _me_; at least somebody else put her up to it,--that strong-minded-looking teacher over yonder, for instance.

_She_ looks capable of anything, and something worse, in the denouncing way; poor little beauty was her cat's-paw this morning." "O Tom, how you talk! She is nobody's cat's-paw.

I can tell you she does her own thinking and acting too.