The School-Girls in Number 40: Principle Put to the Test

“Dear me! dear me!” sighed Carrie Stanley, as she kneeled beside an empty trunk and glanced around her room. “How am I ever to get all these things into two trunks? It’s an impossibility! Where to begin I’m sure I don’t know.”

It was not surprising that Carrie was puzzled as to the proper mode of procedure; for that usually neat apartment was in a state nearly approaching to perfect confusion. The wardrobe stood open, displaying empty hooks; for the dresses and other articles of apparel which had hung upon them had been taken away and were piled, without order or arrangement, on the chairs and bedstead. The four bureau-drawers, instead of being in their proper places, were all upon the floor, forming a barricade about the trunk; the book-shelves, too, had been rifled, and their contents were strewn over the dressing-table, from which some of them had fallen to find a resting-place upon the pretty carpet. Indeed, it would have required no little care and skill, in moving about the chamber, to avoid stepping on books, glove-boxes, perfumery-bottles, and the like, which were strewed around everywhere but where they should have been.

Carrie’s glance around the disordered room seemed only to add to her perplexities; and, tossing back her bright curls, she bent over the large trunk, looking into its depths with a thoughtful air, as if studying the best possible arrangement. She did not appear to derive much satisfaction from her investigations; for, before she had put in a single article, her mother stopped at the open door and looked on the scene of confusion. A roguish smile parted her lips, as she stood for a moment looking on quietly without a word.