We plodded regularly through French exercises, which she corrected by a key, and she kept us at work for a given number of hours during the day; tatting by our sides as we practised our scales, or roasting her petticoats over the fire, whilst Matilda and I read Mrs.Markham's _England_ or Mrs.Trimmer's _Bible Lessons_ aloud by turns to full-stops.

But when lessons were over Miss Perry was quite as glad as we were, and the subjects of our studies had as little to do with our holiday hours as a Sunday sermon with the rest of the week.
She was a great novel-reader, and I think a good many of the things she told us of, as having happened to herself, had their real origin in the Riflebury circulating library.

For she was one of those strange characters who indulge in egotism and exaggeration, till they seem positively to lose the sense of what is fact and what is fiction.
She filled our poor empty little heads with a great deal of folly, and it was well for us that her reign was not a long one.
She was much attached to the school-room fireside.

She could not sit too close to it, or roast herself too thoroughly for her own satisfaction.

I sometimes wondered if the bony woman who kept the library ever complained of the curled condition of the backs of the books Miss Perry held between her eyes and the hot coals for so many hours.
In this highly heated state our governess was, of course, sensitive to the smallest inlet of cooler air, and "draughts" were accordingly her abhorrence.