and scarcely any words, but just a nod and a single
glance--that Mrs. Clavering was very anxious that Kitty should win the
Scholarship.

There was really no reason for this rumor to get afloat, but beyond
doubt the rumor was afloat, was in the air, and was talked of by the
girls--at first, as I have said, scarcely at all, but by and by more
and more plainly as the hours flew on towards the Cherry Feast.

Kitty herself knew nothing of these whispers. She was very busy
planning and reconstructing all her previous ideas with regard to
education. Her first object was to come out one of the happy three who
were to compete for the Scholarship in the coming October. If she
succeeded in this she felt sure that all would be well. She began now
eagerly to examine her companion's faces. Sometimes they turned away
from her bright, almost too bright, eyes, but then again they would
look at her with a certain compassion.

It would be very nice, they all thought, to win the Scholarship--there
was no girl at Cherry Court School who would not feel proud to get so
great a prize--but they also knew that what would be merely nice for
them was life or death for poor Kitty Sharston, and yet nothing had
been told them; they only surmised that there was a wish in Mrs.
Clavering's breast that Kitty should be the lucky girl.

On a certain afternoon about a week before the Cherry Feast, Mabel and
Alice Cunningham, with Florence Aylmer and Edith King, were once more
assembled under one of the cherry trees in the cherry orchard.

"I am sure of it," said Alice. "Of course, it is nothing that I have
heard, but it is a sort of look in Mrs. Clavering's face, and she is so
eager to give Kitty all sorts of help. She has her by herself now
every evening to coach her for an hour."

"Well, for my part, I don't call it a bit fair," said Florence Aylmer.

"Florry! Oh, surely you are not jealous, and of poor little Kitty?"

"I am not exactly jealous--oh, no, I am not jealous," said Florence,
"but it rather takes the heart out of one. If after all one's trouble
and toil and exertion one gets the thing and then Mrs. Clavering is
discontented and Kitty Sharston's heart is broken, I don't see the use
of having a big fight--do you, Mabel? do you, Edith?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Edith; "I only feel puzzled; perhaps it is a
mere suspicion and there is no truth in it."

"I cannot imagine, if it is really Sir John's wish that Kitty should be
the s