Read it through once

Although shy and awkward, home-sick and lonely, little Mary soon found much in the Hans Place establishment to interest and amuse her. Like all other similar establishments, it contained an element of exclusiveness fostered by the snobbish half-dozen great girls who, being “only gentlemen’s daughters, had no earthly right to give themselves airs.” These the little country girl did not take seriously enough to give her cause for trouble. But she noticed them, nevertheless, and watched with youthful contempt their successful attempts to ostracize other less-favoured girls than themselves. Her memories of such incidents are epitomized very charmingly in her _Recollections_, wherein she records the pathetic story of Mademoiselle Rose, and the triumph over her tormentors of the neglected, snubbed and shy poor Betsy. It reads almost like a “moral tale,” but is saved from the general mediocrity of such effusions by its honest ring of indignation, of sweet girlish sympathy with the suffering of her fellow-pupil and governess, and of denunciation of the thoughtless ones.