e and more
pronounced.

"Miss Blake, I am afraid you have not been quite straightforward in this
matter. It appears that you have been ill for months, with an illness
which must necessarily have interfered with your work, and this is the
first time I hear about it. I am Head Mistress of this school; if
anything is wrong with a member of the staff, it is her first duty to
come to me. You tell me now that you have been ill for three months,
since before the last holidays, and acknowledge that you can go on no
longer."

"In ten days we break up. I ask you to allow me ten extra days. The
weather is so hot that the girls would be thankful to escape the
exercises. By the end of the holidays I hope to be quite better."

"The Easter holidays do not seem to have done you much good," Miss
Farnborough said cruelly. Then, seeing the girl flush, she added, "Of
course you shall have your ten days. I can see that you are unfit for
work, and we must manage without you till the end of the term. I am
very sorry for you, Miss Blake; very sorry, indeed. It is very trying
and upsetting and--and expensive into the bargain. Twenty pounds, did
you say? That is surely a great deal! Have you tried the shilling
bottles of gout and rheumatic pills? I have been told they are quite
excellent. But I must repeat that you have been wrong in not coming to
me sooner. As a pure matter of honesty, do you think that you were
justified in continuing to take classes for which you were unfit?"

The tears started to Sophie's eyes; she lowered her lids to hide them
from sight.

"The girls did not suffer," she said deeply. "I did the suffering!"

Miss Farnborough moved impatiently. She was intensely practical and
matter-of-fact, and with all her heart hated any approach to sentiment.

"You suffered _because_ you were unfit," she repeated coldly, "and your
obvious duty was to come to me. You must have known that under the
circumstances I should not have wished you to continue the classes!"

Sophie was silent for a moment, then she said very quietly, very
deliberately--

"Yes, I did know; but I also knew that if I could nerve myself to bear
the pain and the fatigue, I _could_ train the girls as well as ever, and
I knew, too, that if you sent me away in the middle of term you would be
less likely to take me back. It means everything to me, you see. What
would happen to me if I were permanently invalided--without a pension--
at thirty-