hile if I were you. You'd
be just the prettiest thing that was ever seen if you knew how to fix
yourself up, but you _don't_, and you seem to me to mope along the whole
blessed time, without a bit of fun to perk you up. Say! don't you feel
a bit tired of it sometimes? Don't you ever have a kind of feeling that
you want to _do_ something for a change?"

"Sometimes! Do I ever!" Elma echoed the words with startling emphasis.
"Always, always! It is here,"--she pressed her hands on her
breast--"stifled up here all the time--a horrible, rebellious longing to
get out; to be free, to do--I don't know what--really I don't--but
something _different_! I've lived in Norton all my life, and hardly
ever been away. Mother hates travelling in winter, and in the summer
she hates to leave the garden, and I'm so strong that I don't need
change. I never went to school like other girls. Mother disapproves of
school influences, so I had governesses instead. It's awful to have a
resident teacher in the house, and be an only pupil; you feel
governessed out of your life. And now I have no friends to visit, or to
visit me, only the Norton girls, for whom I don't care. It seems
ungrateful when I have so much to be thankful for, but I feel _pent_!
Sometimes I get such a wicked feeling that I just long to snap and snarl
at everybody. I'm ashamed all the time, and can _see_ how horrid I am,
but--"

She broke off, sighing deeply, and Cornelia crouched forward, clasping
her knees as before, and bending her chin to meet them, her eyes ashine
with eagerness and curiosity.

"Yes, I know; I've been there myself. I was there this morning after
just two weeks. I don't begin to have your endoorance, my dear, but you
take a straight tip from me. When you feel the symptoms coming on,
don't you go trying to be sweet and forbearing, and bottling up all the
froth; it's not a mite of use, for it's bound to rise to the top, and
keeping don't improve it. Just let yourself go, and be right-down ugly
to _somebody_--anyone will do, the first that comes handy--and you'll
feel a heap better!" She sighed, and turned a roguish glance towards
the shrouded windows of The Nook. "I was ugly to Aunt Soph before I
came out!"

Already Elma had mastered the subtleties of Americanese sufficiently to
understand that the terms "lovely" and "ugly" had no bearing on outward
appearance, but were descriptive of character only. Her eyes widened,
partly in horrifi