CHAPTER XV.
CANARIES AND GREYCOATS.
So Corona was sent to school; but not, as it befell, to Miss Dickinson's.
Brother Copas, indeed, paid a visit to Miss Dickinson, and, warned by some wise instinct, took the child with him.
Miss Dickinson herself opened the front door, and explained with an accent of high refinement that her house-parlourmaid was indisposed that morning, and her cook busy for the moment.
"You have some message for me ?" she asked graciously; for the Brethren of St.Hospital pick up a little business as letter-carriers or _commissionaires_.
On learning her visitor's errand, of a sudden she stiffened in demeanour.

Corona, watching her face intently, noted the change.
"Dear me, what a very unusual application!" said Miss Dickinson, but nevertheless invited them to step inside.
"We can discuss matters more freely without the child," she suggested.
"As you please, ma'am," said Copas, "provided you don't ask her to wait in the street." Corona was ushered into an apartment at the back--the boudoir, its mistress called it--and was left there amid a din of singing canaries, while Miss Dickinson carried off Brother Copas to the drawing-room.
The boudoir contained some scholastic furniture and a vast number of worthless knick-knacks in poker-work, fret-work, leathern _applique_-work, gummed shell-work, wool-work, tambour-work, with crystoleum paintings and drawings in chalk and water-colour.
On a table in front of the window stood a cage with five canaries singing in it.

Corona herself felt a sense of imprisonment, but no desire to sing.

The window looked upon a walled yard, in which fifteen girls of various ages were walking through some kind of drill under an instructress whose appearance puzzled her until she remembered that Miss Dickinson's cook was "busy for the moment." Corona watched their movements with an interest begotten of pity.
The girls whispered and prinked, and exchanged confidences with self-conscious airs.

They paid but a perfunctory attention to the drill.