d, and to feel that a visit to the vicarage was all the festivity
that would be likely to come her way. There were no parties or
pantomimes included in her holiday programme. Aunt Barbara had had many
expenses lately, and her narrow income was stretched to its fullest
extent to pay school fees and the price of the contract ticket.

"It's hateful to be poor," thought Dorothy. "I want pretty dresses and
parties like other girls;" and she went home with the old wrinkle
between her brows, and a little droop at the corners of her mouth.

If Aunt Barbara noticed these and divined the cause, she made no
comment; she did not remind Dorothy of how much she had given up on her
behalf, or of what real sacrifice it entailed to send her to Avondale.
She took the opportunity, however, one day to urge her to work her
hardest at school.

"You may have to earn your own living some time, child," she said. "If
anything happens to me, my small pension goes back to the owner of the
Sherbourne estate. I shall be able to leave you nothing. A good
education is the only thing I can give you, so you must try to make the
most of it."

"Shall I have to be a teacher?" asked Dorothy blankly.

"I don't know. It will depend on what I can have you trained for,"
replied Miss Sherbourne.

She was hurt sometimes by Dorothy's manner; the girl seemed
dissatisfied, though she was evidently making an effort to hide the
fact.

"It's hard for her to mix at school with girls who have so many more
advantages," thought Aunt Barbara. "Was I wise to send her to Avondale,
I wonder? Is it having the effect of making her discontented? It's only
lately she's grown like this--she was never so before."

Discontented exactly described Dorothy's state of mind. She considered
that Fate had used her unkindly. The prospect of gaining her own living
was extremely distasteful to her. She hated the idea of becoming a
teacher, and no other work seemed any more congenial.

"I'd always looked forward to enjoying myself when I was grown up," she
thought bitterly, "and now it will be nothing but slave."

At present Dorothy was viewing life entirely from her own standpoint,
and was suffering from an attack of that peculiar complaint called
"self-itis". She was aggrieved that the world had not given her more,
and it never struck her to think of what she might give to the world. It
seemed as if she could no longer enjoy all the little simple occupations
in which she had been