over, and in another month school would be
closed for the summer. Carrie was to spend her vacation on the Oregon
farm with her grandmother, and Tabitha must return to the desert alone.
She sat swinging idly under the pepper trees, her Latin grammar on her
knees, but with eyes staring off across the smooth lawn and beautiful
shrubbery, thinking mournfully of the long, hot weeks on the burning
desert before September would come again.

"I have hardly had a chance to say a word to Carrie all this year, and
now after counting on three months alone with her in Silver Bow, she is
going away for her vacation. That is always the way things happen with
me. Some people have everything and others nothing." Half unconsciously
she began to hum the tune Mrs. Vane had composed for _The Discontented
Buttercup_; then realizing what she was singing, she laughed.

"Now aren't you ashamed of yourself, Tabitha Catt?" she exclaimed aloud.
"When you have the chance to go to boarding school and get an education,
and make so many beautiful friendships and have everything so perfectly
lovely, here you are envying Carrie because she is going to her
grandmother's for vacation. She isn't well, and it wouldn't be good for
her to go back to the desert for the hot summer months. Besides, you
promised to be good and not to envy people any more. You are a
discontented buttercup.

'Look bravely up into the sky,
And be content with knowing
That God wished for a buttercup
Just here, where you are growing.'"

"What's that about a buttercup?" asked a merry voice behind her, so
unexpectedly that Tabitha nearly fell out of the hammock. So intent had
she been upon her own thoughts that she had not heard the tiptoeing
footsteps on the soft grass, and was startled when Carrie plumped down
beside her, and three or four other girls ranged themselves in
comfortable positions in the fresh clover at their feet.

"How you frightened me!" cried the absorbed songstress, moving over to
give Carrie more room. "Where have you been? You weren't in your rooms
when I came down, so I slipped out here to study."

"About buttercups?" teased Bertha, tickling her throat with a long
grass. "If you had gone up to the third floor you would have found us
all in Hattie's room, admiring the watch she just got for her birthday.
Have you seen it?"

"No, I was just finishing a letter when she called us, and by the time I
was ready to go, you had all disappear