The Manor School

Christian Mitford was thirteen years of age. She was a tall girl with a pale face, a little pronounced in expression, and quantities of thick, untidy, very bright fair hair, which had a habit of tumbling in a great mass over her eyes and round her shoulders. She was supposed to be much spoilt, and it was well known she had a will of her own.

Christian was an only child. Her home was in a big house in Russell Square. The house was large enough to have been the abode of princes in bygone days. It had enormous, lofty rooms, wide halls, great corridors, spacious landings, and, above all things, charming attics. The attics were not only very big and very roomy, but they were also not required for the use of the family at all. In consequence Christian took possession of them. She had adopted them for her own use when she was quite a little girl, not more than seven or eight years of age.

It was in the attics that Christian lived her real life. She made a fairy world for herself, and there she was happy. In the great front attic, which ran right across the house, she kept her dolls. Christian had twelve dolls, and they all had special characteristics and specially interesting histories. The adventures those dolls went through would have delighted any other little girl; Christian took these things as a matter of course. If Rosabel, the doll in the blue frock, would run away at night to live with the gypsies for a long time, she deserved punishment, and would be treated accordingly. If Abelard, who was dressed in the costume of an old crusader, would fight his enemies until he himself was all to pieces, and had to lie in bed without arms or legs, surely that also was his own fault, and his punishment served him right. Christian's cheeks used to blaze and her eyes grow bright as these adventurous dolls went through their career of naughtiness in her presence. She was so imaginative that she got herself to believe that they really did these things without any help from her, and sometimes she would sigh and shake her head and think herself much to be pitied for having such a fearfully troublesome, not to say dangerous family to manage.

But the dolls, with their dolls'-house for the respectable members of the family, and with their forests full of bandits, their crusades, their land of Palestine, their troubadours for the others, had had their day. Christian grew old enough to feel the glamour of the dolls depart. It was ridiculous to suppose that Abelard had really got that ghastly wound in his side, or that he had really lost his legs, fighting the Saracens. Yes, the dolls had had their day. But the fairy tales could be read and lived through, and she herself could be the heroine of adventure; and what a time she had when she was the voiceless Mermaid who loved a Prince and for his sake had her tongue cut out! Or how depressed she was when she acted the Ugly Duckling; and how she had, as the little Tin Soldier, adored the little Paper Princess!

But even the fairy-tale stage came to an end, and the history books had now their turn. Christian was William Tell, and her hand shook as she fired at the apple. Or she was Joan of Arc in prison, and putting on her armor when there was no one by to see. Or she was Charlotte Corday at the moment of her great inspiration. Or, again, she was on the way to the guillotine as that great hero of fiction, Sidney Carton.

The world knew nothing about Christian. They saw a dull little girl who flitted through life demurely and never expressed any strong feelings about anything.