with a
multitude of others, constantly recurring, reduced the school days in
the year to a number whose smallness Mrs. Grubbling would have
indignantly disputed, had it been calculated and set before her; she
being one of those not uncommon persons who regard a duty continually
evaded as one continually performed, it being necessarily just as much
on their minds; till, at last, Herbert had a winter's illness, and in
summer it wasn't worth while, and the winter after, baby came, so that
of course she couldn't be spared at all; and it seemed little likely now
that she ever again would be. But she kept her spelling book, and read
over and over what she knew, and groped her way slowly into more, till
she promoted herself from that to "Mother Goose"--from "Mother Goose" to
"Fables for the Nursery"--and now, her ever fresh and unfailing feast
was the "Child's Own Book of Fairy Tales," and an odd volume of the
"Parents' Assistant." She picked out, slowly, the gist of these, with a
lame and uncertain interpretation. She lived for weeks with Beauty and
the Beast--with Cinderella--with the good girl who worked for the witch,
and shook her feather bed every morning; till at last, given leave to go
home and see her mother, the gold and silver shower came down about her,
departing at the back door. Perhaps she should get her pay, some time,
and go home and see her mother.

Meanwhile, she identified herself with--lost herself utterly in,--these
imaginary lives. She was, for the time, Cinderella; she was Beauty; she
was above all, the Fair One with Golden Locks; she was Simple Susan
going to be May Queen; she dwelt in the old Castle of Rossmore, with the
Irish Orphans. The little Grubbling house in Budd Street was peopled all
through, in every corner, with her fancies. Don't tell me she had
nothing but her niggardly outside living there.

And the wonder began to come up in her mind, as it did in Faith
Gartney's, whether and when "something might happen" to her.

CHAPTER V.

SOMETHING HAPPENS.

"Athirst! athirst! The sandy soil
Bears no glad trace of leaf or tree;
No grass-blade sigheth to the heaven
Its little drop of ecstasy.

"Yet other fields are spreading wide
Green bosoms to the bounteous sun;
And palms and cedars shall sublime
Their rapture for thee,--waiting one!"

"Take us down to see the apple woman," said Master Herbert, going out
with Glory and the baby one day when his school didn't keep, and Mrs