Behold him in pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his watch-guard round his neck. Were copies to be written? In capital B’s and H’s most of the girls under Miss Peecher’s tuition were half a year ahead of every other letter in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, administered by Miss Peecher, often devoted itself to providing Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe of fabulous extent: fourscore and four neckties at two and ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of silver watches at four pounds fifteen and sixpence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shillings; and many similar superfluities.
The vigilant watchman, using his daily opportunities of turning his eyes in Bradley’s direction, soon apprized Miss Peecher that Bradley was more preoccupied than had been his wont, and more given to strolling about with a downcast and reserved face, turning something difficult in his mind that was not in the scholastic syllabus. Putting this and that together—combining under the head “this,” present appearances and the intimacy with Charley Hexam, and ranging under the head “that” the visit to his sister, the watchman reported to Miss Peecher his strong suspicions that the sister was at the bottom of it.
“I wonder,” said Miss Peecher, as she sat making up her weekly report on a half-holiday afternoon, “what they call Hexam’s sister?”
Mary Anne, at her needlework, attendant and attentive, held her arm up.
“Well, Mary Anne?”
“She is named Lizzie, ma’am.”
“She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,” returned Miss Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. “Is Lizzie a Christian name, Mary Anne?”