Reaping the Whirlwind, by Mrs MacKenzie Daniels

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. MINERVA S SHADOW. The three directresses of the establishment of Parnassus House expressed different degrees of consternation?namely, the positive, the comparative, and the superlative?according to their respective natures, when they were informed that I had received a summons to return home immediately. Miss Miranda, the youngest and the most genial of the sisters, thought it a shame that poor Signer Robello, the Italian master, and such an interesting man, should lose his best pupil just as the half-yearly opportunity for exhibiting her proficiency in public, and thus gaining him tdat, was coming on. Miss Hortensia was of opinion that Mrs. Beamish must really be wanting in sound judgment, not to say common sense, to deprive her daughter, on any ordinary pretext, of six weeks' study at Parnassus House; and Miss Hooper herself?a very strong-minded lady indeed?hesitated a whole day as to whether she might not resist the mandate altogether, and send u a bit of her own mind to the infatuated Mrs. Beamish, in lieu of the daughter she had so very thoughtlessly and improperly asked for. But in spite of all 4his, I knew from the first that my fate was decided; and I went on with my packing and other preparations as fast and comfortably as if the idea of my leaving Parnassus House had been received with rapturous satisfaction by the amiable ladies who reigned and ruled there. Not that I was without regrets, and even some sorrow, on my own account, in taking a premature leave of a place where I had been really happy, and of some few companions to whom I had been warmly attached; but from the moment I had read mamma'a letter, the fact had been clear to my mind that I, and not Gertrude, would have to make the sacrifice required of one of us; and, somehow or other, I ha...