accustomed to take so much pleasure--she was tired
of her stamps and postcards, bookbinding and clay modelling had lost
their attraction, and she was apathetic on the subject of fancy work.

"I don't know what's come over you," declared Martha. "You just idle
about the house doing nothing at all. Why can't you take your knitting,
or a bit of crochet in your fingers?"

"Simply because I don't want to. I wish you'd leave me alone, Martha!"
replied Dorothy irritably.

She resented the old servant's interference, for Martha was less patient
and forbearing than Aunt Barbara, and hinted pretty plainly sometimes
what she thought of her nursling.

So the holidays passed by--dreary ones for Dorothy, who spent whole
listless evenings staring at the fire; and drearier still for Aunt
Barbara, who made many efforts to interest the girl, and, failing
utterly, went about with a new sadness in her eyes and a fresh grief in
her heart that she would not have confessed to anyone.

Everybody at Holly Cottage was glad when the term began again.

"I don't hold with holidays," grumbled Martha. "Give young folks plenty
of work, say I, and they're much better than mooning about with naught
to do. Dorothy's a different girl when she's got her lessons to keep her
busy."

To do Dorothy justice, she certainly worked her hardest at the College,
though the prospect of becoming a teacher did not strike her as an
inspiring goal for her efforts. She put the idea away from her as much
as possible, but every now and then it returned like a bad nightmare.

"I should hate to be Miss Pitman," she remarked one day at school. "It
must be odious to be a mistress."

"Do you think so?" replied Grace Russell. "Why, I'd love it! I mean to
go in for teaching myself some time."

"But will you have to earn your own living? I thought your father was
well off," objected Dorothy.

"That's no reason why I shouldn't be of some use in the world," returned
Grace. "Teaching is a splendid profession if one does it thoroughly. I
have a cousin who's a class mistress at a big school near London, and
she's so happy--her girls just adore her. It must be an immense
satisfaction to feel one's doing some real work, and not being a mere
drone in the hive."

This was a new notion to Dorothy, and though she could not quite digest
it at first, she turned it over in her mind. She was astonished that
Grace, who had a beautiful home, could wish to take up work.

"She'd make a