n you'd sooner read. Of course I want to go to school, _dreadfully_!'

She paused for breath, and Egbert whistled. 'Well, I'm bothered!' he
remarked. He had never pretended to understand his little sister, but he
could not help being astonished at this totally new side to her character.
Peter took refuge as usual in a laugh; and Wilfred stared silently. But
Kit looked more solemn than ever.

'I'm disappointed in you, Babs,' he said. 'I should never have thought
that you wanted to be a young lady, never!'

'But I don't, Kit!' answered the child in a troubled tone. 'I want to do
something new, that's all. I--I'm sure father will understand what I mean,
if he sends me to school,' she added, with something that sounded like a
shake in her voice.

'Ah--father!' replied Christopher, gruffly. 'Father will not be here, you
see.'

A sudden silence came over them; and Barbara turned to the window and
flattened her nose against the glass pane, and blinked her eyes with
all her might. There was nothing to be seen outside but the blank wall
that usually limits the view from the back of a London house; but the
child with the untidy brown hair, and the small impish face, and the
slender long legs, was able, for all that, to see pictures out there.
She always saw pictures when she was excited about anything; and just
now she was thrilled with a new dream--a dream of the place that her
imagination named 'school.' She had always hidden from the boys how much
she wanted to go to school; and it was only this afternoon, when their
derision provoked her into it, that she had let them have a guess at her
real feelings. They had not understood her a bit, as she knew they would
not; but that did not matter. Her father would understand, though she
never told him much, either, and he had to guess for himself what
went on in the quaint little mind of his only daughter; but then,
Barbara had a shrewd idea that he always guessed right, and that came to
the same thing, really. Just as she was comforting herself with this
assurance, the miserable consciousness returned that he was going
away, and she would be left at the mercy of a strange aunt; and she
found herself staring at nothing but a dismal brick wall, with eyes
that were blinking to keep back the tears.

Peter was the first to break the pause that had settled with a kind of
gloom on the old London schoolroom. He was always on the alert to resent
anything that cast a shadow over the ligh