ing most
immensely. It will be far nicer than having a governess at home. It's so
fearfully slow while you're away at Stavebury. Aunt Bertha grows more
prim and particular every day, and I never seem able to do a single
thing right; it's scold and lecture, lecture and scold, from morning
till night! As for Miss Perkins, I was sick of the very sight of her!
You can't imagine how glad I was when she took her final departure. I
said good-bye as nicely as I could, for decency's sake, and then rushed
into the empty schoolroom and danced a jig and clapped my hands for joy,
to think I need never do lessons with her there again."

Keith laughed. "I don't suppose she's crying her eyes out over you
either," he observed.

"I'm sure she isn't. I've no doubt she's almost as delighted as I am.
She's going to The Thorns, to teach Blanche and Minna Lawson. They're
absolutely pattern girls, warranted never to do anything they shouldn't,
so I hope she'll be happy at last. I find them insufferably dull."

"You may get a far worse mistress at school than Miss Perkins."

"I don't think so. You know, Mary Kennedy has been at The Grange, and
she says Miss Drummond is a perfect dear. They have all kinds of games
there too. It will be lovely to learn hockey and lacrosse; I've never
played either before."

"School isn't all games, I can tell you," said Keith, pulling a straw
from the stook and chewing it meditatively. "There's a jolly lot of
grind to be gone through. You'll find you'll have to set that young head
of yours to work in good earnest."

"I can easily do that," declared Aldred, tossing back her dark curls,
"I've no fear at all of not managing my lessons. Why, when I cared to
take the trouble, I could simply astonish Miss Perkins. I could work
sums far quicker than she did, and I used to reel off French verbs so
fast that sometimes she could hardly follow me, even with the book in
her hand."

"All very well with a private governess, Madam Conceit! You've had no
competition. Wait till you work with a class. At The Grange you'll
probably find several other girls who can reel things off a little
quicker."

"Then I shall go quicker still. I tell you, I mean to be top of my
class, and head of the examinations too."

"Don't boast too much beforehand, or pride may bring a fall!" said
Keith, speaking with the superior authority of his sixteen years.
"You'll have to find your own level, Sis. The other girls may have
ambitions as wel