Lucy at Boarding School

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Maisie is foremost amongst the girls at boarding-school in exchanging jest and puns over the wall with a number of young boys, one of whom gives her a packet of cigarettes and teaches her to smoke. Maisie is an apt pupil, and, delighted with the soothing influence of her cigarette, she slips away to offer up incense to my Lady Nicotine in peace and quietness. She smokes like a chimney, and a suspicious whiff betrays her whereabouts and her wrongdoing to the headmistress. Maisie then retreats into a cellar room, pulling the door to and holding it fast; but, unawares, she catches her dress in the door, and it is cut by the headmistress as a means of detecting the culprit later on. Her pupil's first feeling of dismay upon discovering what has happened is quickly followed by the conviction that he must render the evidence against her useless by n politic counter-stroke, and she accordingly cuts a piece out of the dress of each of her schoolfellows after bedtime. Unluckily, she has omitted to notice that her underskirt has also been damaged, and this betrays her on the following day, when she is rigorously punished.