ave seen her picture; she must have been
lovely."

But Grace shook her head fiercely.

"My father is an actor, and I want to be one, too, but he promised my
mother before she died--she didn't want me to be one. What do I care
about all this stuff we are learning here? I tell you I want to take a
tambourine and go on the road with a hand-organ man. That would be life!
I would, too, if I only had the luck to have hair and eyes like yours,
Fluffy."

"You could wear a wig, of course," said Bertha, soberly. "The eyes would
be a difficulty, though, I'm afraid."

"Well, I am here now! and I'm supposed to stay another year, and then go
to college. Four--five years more of bondage, and tasks, and lectures on
good behaviour! Am I likely to stand it, I ask you?"

"I hope so!" said Gertrude, steadily. "It would be a thousand pities if
you didn't, Grace, and you know it as well as I do."

"And if I do, it must be in my own way!" cried the wild girl, swinging
round again on her heel. "And if I can make things more endurable
here--if I can get rid of--it must be in my own way, I tell you. Snowy,
you are like your name, I suppose. You are white and gold and calm,--I
don't know what you are, except that we are not of the same flesh. I
tell you, I turn to fire inside! I must break out, I must go off when
the fit comes on me. I do no harm! It doesn't hurt anybody for me to go
down the wall and cool myself with a run in the fields. Why can't I be
let alone? I am not a child! I tell you it is the way I am made!"

The Snowy Owl rose, and, going to the fireplace, laid her arm around
Grace's shoulder.

"You are making yourself!" she said. "It's your own life, Wolf; are you
making it worse or better?"

"I'm not doing either. I am taking it as it comes, as it was meant to
come."

Gertrude shook her head quietly.

"That can't be!" she said. "That is impossible, Wolf. We have to be
growing one way or the other; we can't stay as we are, for a year or a
day. And there's another thing: you don't seem to think about the
others, about the effect on the school. If you are to break the laws,
why should not every one do the same?"

"Because they are different!" said Grace, sullenly.

"You don't know that! They may have the same temptations, and be
stronger than you to resist them. You ought to be a strong girl, Grace,
and, instead of that, you are weak--as weak as water."

"Weak? I!" cried Grace, her eyes blazing. "If any one else had sa