le danger of
breaking down before the boys.

Before retiring she sought an explanation from Mary. Yes, Mary knew;
she had overheard aunt telling Annie that Miss Hillary had complained
about Lizzie not doing her sums. This was a blow to Elizabeth. It was
not so dreadful that anyone should complain of her to Aunt Margaret;
that was quite natural; but that Miss Hillary should do the
complaining! Her teacher persistently refused to sit upon the throne
which Elizabeth raised again and again for her in her heart. Miss
Hillary did not understand--did not even care whether she understood or
not, while her pupil's worshiping nature still made pitiful attempts to
put her where a true teacher could have ruled so easily and with such
far-reaching results.

But the unmathematical head was not long troubled over even this
disaster. It was soon again filled with such glorious visions as drove
out all dark shadows of unspellable words and unsolvable problems.
Elizabeth's ambition reached out far beyond the schoolroom. There was
no romance or glory about getting ninety-nine per cent. in an
arithmetic examination, as Rosie so often did, after all, and Elizabeth
could not imagine Joan of Arc worrying over the spelling of Orleans.
So she solaced herself with classic landscapes, with rhymes written
concerning the lords and ladies that peopled them, and with dreams of
future glory.

And so the days of anxious waiting for the great visit sped past; and
in the interval Elizabeth might have fallen hopelessly into idle habits
had it not been for the one person who, quietly and unnoticed,
exercised the strongest influence over her life. To the little girl's
surprise, Mother MacAllister was the one person who held out no hopes
concerning Mrs. Jarvis. It seemed strange; for Mother MacAllister was
the most sympathetic person in the whole wide world, and, besides, the
only person who could always be depended upon to understand. But she
did not seem to care how rich or great or glorious that great lady was,
and took no interest whatever in the hopes of her coming visit. But
she did take a vital interest in her little girl's progress at school,
and one day she managed to find the key to those intellectual faculties
which Elizabeth had kept so long locked away.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the two comrades--the tall, stooped
woman with the white hair and the beautiful wrinkled face, and the
little girl with the blue-checked pinafore