“And now that I have them, how am I to decide? That is the question?”

The speaker was a fine-looking man about thirty-five years of age, seated before a large writing-table in a handsomely appointed library. It was littered with catalogues, pamphlets, letters and papers sent from dozens of schools, and from the quantity of them one would fancy that every school in the country was represented. This was the result of an advertisement in the “Times” for a school in which young children are received, carefully trained, thoroughly taught, and which can furnish unquestionable references regarding its social standing and other qualifications.

It was a handsome, but seriously perplexed, face which bent over the letters, and more than once the shapely hand was raised to the puckered forehead and the fingers thrust impatiently through the golden brown hair, setting it on end and causing its owner to look more distracted than ever.

“Poor, wee lassie, you little realize what a problem you are to me. Would to God the one best qualified to solve it could have been spared to you,” and the handsome head fell forward upon the hands, as tears of bitter anguish flooded the brown eyes.

Can anything be more pathetic than a strong man’s tears? And Clayton Reeve’s were wrung from an almost despairing heart.

For ten years his life had been a dream of happiness. At twenty-five he had married a beautiful, talented girl, who made his home as nearly perfect as a home can be made, and when, three years later, a little daughter, her mother’s living image, came to live with them, he felt that he had no more to ask for. Seven years slipped away, as only years of perfect happiness can slip, and then came the end. The beautiful wife and mother went to sleep forever, leaving the dear husband and lovely little daughter alone. For six months Mr. Reeve strove to fill the mother’s place, but until she was taken from him he had never realized how perfectly and completely his almost idolized wife had filled his home, conducting all so quietly and gracefully that even those nearest and dearest never suspected how much thought she had given to their comfort until her firm, yet gentle, rule was missed.

Happily, Toinette was too young to fully appreciate her loss, and although she grieved in her childish way for the sweet, smiling mother who had so loved her, it was a child’s blessed evanescent grief, which could find consolation in her pets and dollies, and—blessed boon—forget.

But Clayton Reeve never forgot, not for one moment; and though the six months had in a measure softened his grief, his sense of loss and loneliness increased each day, until at last he could no longer endure the sight of the home which they together had planned and beautified.

Unfortunately, neither he nor his wife had near relatives. She had been an only child whose parents had died shortly after her marriage, and such distant relatives as remained to him were far away in England, his native land. His greatest problem was the little daughter. Nursemaids and nursery-governesses were to be had by the score, but nursemaids and nursery-governesses were one thing with a mistress at the head of the household and quite another without one, as, during the past six months, Mr. Reeve had learned to his sorrow, and the poor man had more than once been driven to the verge of insanity by their want of thought, or even worse.

At last he determined to close his house, place Toinette in some “ideal” school, and travel for six months, or even longer, little dreaming that the six months would lengthen into as many years ere he again saw her. The trip begun for diversion was soon merged into one for business interests, as the prominent law firm of which he was a member had matters of importance to be looked after upon the other side of the water, and were only too glad to have so efficient a person to do it.

So, before he realized it, half the globe divided him from the sunny-haired little daughter whom he had placed in the supposed ideal school, chosen after deliberate consideration from those he had corresponded with.

But this anticipates a trifle.

As he sits in the library of his big house, a house which seems so like some beautiful instrument lacking the touch of the master hand to draw forth its sweetest and best, the sound of little dancing feet can be heard through the half-open door, and a sweet little voice calls out:

“Papa, Papa Clayton. Where is my precious Daddy?” and a golden-haired child running into the room throws herself into his arms, clasps her own about his neck and nestles her head upon his shoulder.

He held her close as he asked:

“Well, little Heart’s-Ease, what can the old Daddy do for you?”

The child raised her head, and, looking at him with her big brown eyes, eyes so like his own, said, reproachfully: “You are not an old Daddy; Stanton (the butler) is old, you are just my own, own Papa Clayton, and mamma used to say that you couldn’t grow old ’cause she and I loved you so hard.”

Mr. Reeve quivered slightly at the child’s words, and with a surprised look she asked:

“Are you cold, dear Daddy? It isn’t cold here, is it?”

“No, not in the room, Heart’s-Ease, but right here,” laying his hand upon his heart.

The child regarded him questioningly with her big, earnest eyes, and said:

“Did it grow cold because mamma went so sound asleep?”

“I’m afraid so; but now let us talk about something else: I’ve some news for you, but do not know how you will like it; sit still while I tell it to you,” and he began to unfold his plan regarding the school.

The school was chosen and Toinette placed therein. What momentous results often follow a simple act. When Clayton Reeve placed his little girl with the Misses Carter, intending to leave her there a few months, and seek the change of scene so essential to his health, he did not realize that her whole future would be more or less influenced by the period she was destined to spend there. No brighter, sunnier, happier disposition could have been met with than Toinette’s when she entered the school; none more restless, distrustful and dissatisfied than her’s when she left it, nearly six years later.

If we are held accountable for sins of omission, as well as sins of commission, certainly the Misses Carter had a long account to meet.

Like many others who had chosen that vocation, they were utterly incapable of filling it either to their own credit or the advantage of those they taught. While perfectly capable of imparting the knowledge they had obtained from books, and of making any number of rules to be followed as those of the “Medes and Persians,” they did not, in the very remotest degree, possess the insight into character, the sympathy with their pupils so essential in true teachers.

It is not alone to learn that which is contained between the covers of a book that our girls are sent to school or college, but also to gather in the thousand and one things untaught by either books or words. These must be absorbed as the flowers absorb the sunshine and dew, growing lovelier, sweeter and more attractive each day and never suspecting it.

And so the shaping of Toinette’s character, so beautifully begun by the wise, gentle mother,