s, brushed and curled her hair; bore
many of her punishments; brought her numberless fal-lals (keepsakes she
called them); wore a lock of her golden hair in a locket around her
neck, and told her all of her secrets--she had as many as ten a week
sometimes.

Miss Weir, the "principal" of the school, had, many years ago, given to
Dorothea's mother much the same sort of love as Mona Parbury now gave to
Dorothea. And it was owing to this old love that Dorothea was now
admitted on very low terms to the most fashionable school in Sydney.

No one among all the pupils (there were fifteen) knew anything about
poverty--no one but Dorothea. As she once said in a burst of anguish to
her mother--

"They are all rich, every _one_ of them. They live in beautiful houses
and have parlourmaids and housemaids and nursemaids, and kitchenmaids
and cooks and carriages, and as much money to spend as we have to live
on, I believe."

It was very rarely, though, that any of her troubles ruffled her calm
serenity. Dorothea was usually as placid as the placidest baby. She
longed to be rich, and to have pretty things to wear and a handsome
house to live in, but she never talked of her poverty. Instead she
draped its cloven foot gracefully, and turned her back on it--and
_imagined_ she was rich--from Monday till Friday.

She discussed "fashion" and "society" with Alma Montague and Nellie
Harden, and grew quite familiar with the names and doings of the great
society dames. She even learned--at considerable pains--a "society"
tone of voice with a drawl in it and a little lisp.

School life was a great happiness to her--the regular hours, the
beautifully ordered house, the neat table, the daily constitutional, the
morning and evening prayer-time, and the hour in the drawing-room at
night, everything that made life from Monday till Friday.

It was Friday till Monday that was the cross, Friday till Monday, the
days when the cloven foot would not be draped, when the elegancies of
life were left behind in the city, when the twins and the babies were
everywhere, when the meals were often but suddenly thought of snatches
of food.

Sometimes the thought of the looming future--the time when all the days
would be as Friday till Monday, when there would no longer be any school
days to be lived by her--would quite break down her placidity, and make
her feel she could put down her head anywhere and cry.

Yet away they were marching, one by one, all the