CHAPTER III.
I AM BOUND APPRENTICE.
Although holidays were a thing unknown at the Genevan Hospital, yet discipline grew sensibly lighter during Mr.Scougall's honeymoon, being left to Miss Plinlimmon on the understanding that in emergency she might call in the strong and secular arm of Mr.George.
But we all loved Miss Plinlimmon, and never drove her beyond appealing to what she called our better instincts.
Her dearest aspiration (believe it if you can) was to make gentlemen of us--of us, doomed to start in life as parish apprentices! And to this her curriculum recurred whether it had been divagating into history, geography, astronomy, English composition, or religious knowledge.

"The author of the book before me, a B.A .-- otherwise a Bachelor of Arts, but not on that account necessarily unmarried-- observes that to believe the sun goes round the earth is a vulgar error.

For my part I should hardly go so far: but it warns us how severely those may be judged who obtrusively urge in society opinions which the wise in their closets have condemned." "The refulgent orb--another way, my dears, of saying the sun--is in the vicinity of Persia an object of religious adoration.

The Christian nations, better instructed, content themselves with esteeming it warmly, and as they follow its course in the heavens, draw from it the useful lesson to look always on the bright side of things." Humble beneficent soul! I never met another who had learned that lesson so thoroughly.

Once she pointed out to me at the end of her dictation-book a publisher's colophon of a sundial with the word _Finis_ above it, and, underneath, the words "Every Hour Shortens Life." "Now, I prefer to think that every hour lengthens it," said she, with one of her few smiles; for her cheerfulness was always serious.
Best of all were the hours when she read to us extracts from her album.