en
errands grumblingly--all for Dot!

Betty was locked in her room in disgrace, for running away to seek her
fortune. No one was allowed to speak to her, even Baby's "Bet, Bet," was
sternly hushed; two slices of bread and a glass of water were placed
outside her door three times a day; three times a day she was permitted
to walk for five minutes, each time alone in the garden, then back again
to her room.

This state of things, which had commenced on Wednesday morning, was, if
Betty showed proper penitence and meekness, to terminate on Saturday
morning.

Yet even prisoner Betty was employed on Dot's behalf. She had Dot's
stockings to mend, and to add insignificant things like buttons and
tapes and hooks and eyes to those of her garments which had an
insufficiency of such trifles. And she was sewing away industriously
as she brooded over her woes.

Dot herself was unpacking and packing up. Unpacking all her exercise
books, and notebooks, and stacks of neat examination papers; her lesson
books and Czerney's 101 _Exercises for the Pianoforte_; her sewing
samples and wool-work; her study of a head in crayon, and waratahs and
flannel flowers in oils, and peep of Sydney Harbour in water colours.

"When I come home again," she told herself gravely, "I will arrange
life: I'll practise _at least_ two hours every morning; I'll do some
solid good reading _every_ day--some one like Shakespeare or Milton or
Bacon! I'll paint every afternoon. I really have a talent for
landscapes. And I'll finish writing my novel. For some things I'm really
glad I've finished learning."

A keen observer, regarding Dot's new scheme for life, would detect very
little time or thought for reforming the household, and training Betty
and teaching the younger ones. But then, Dot's schemes varied, and a
day seemed to her a very big piece of time to have to play with as she
liked, all in her own hands. Hitherto it had been given out to her in
hours by Miss Weir--this hour for French, that for English, this for a
constitutional, that for sewing, this for the Scriptures, that for
practice, and so on.

What wonder that the felt she could crowd all the arts and sciences into
a day when all the hours belonged to her for her very own.

When she went to bed at night, by way of beginning the home reforms she
looked at Betty very earnestly and shook her head, words being
forbidden.

And she removed her own particular text from above her bed to above
Betty