Thus at home, if home it could be called, and at school, Annie's days passed--as most days pass--with family resemblance and individual difference wondrously mingled.

She became interested in what she had to learn, if not from the manner in which it was presented to her comprehension, yet from the fact that she had to learn it.

Happily or unhappily, too, she began to get used to the sight of the penal suffering of her schoolfellows.

Nor had anything of the kind as yet visited her; for it would have been hard for even a more savage master than Mr Malison to find occasion, now that the first disabling influences had passed away, to punish the nervous, delicate, anxious little orphan, who was so diligent, and as quiet as a mouse that fears to awake a sleeping cat.

She had a scared look too, that might have moved the heart of Malison even, if he had ever paid the least attention to the looks of children.