wed courage.

Miss Smythe came up at the same moment and put the crowning touch on
Barbara's discomfiture by examining the luckless flannel petticoat and
disclosing the fact that she had sewed it up all the way round.

'How do you expect a child is going to get into that?' asked the
needlework mistress, holding up the misshapen garment to the derision of
the whole room.

Barbara accepted the criticism and the laughter with equal unconcern.
She had never supposed that any child was going to get into a petticoat
that only existed for her express torture and the witticisms of Miss
Smythe. It had been unpicked so often that it would scarcely hold the
large, uneven stitches she repeatedly put into it; and she took up the
scissors and began to undo it all over again as a necessary part of the
evening's proceedings. Hardly, however, had she snipped at the first
piece of cotton, than she was assailed on both sides by eager helpers,
thirsting for the painful pleasures of self-sacrifice.

'Let me do it for you, Babe!' exclaimed Angela, quite forgetting their
recent dispute on the very subject of the virtue she now was so anxious
to exploit.

'No, let me,' begged Mary Wells on the other side.

Barbara looked from one to the other doubtfully. The Canon had said
nothing about complications of this kind. Then Mary took the decision
and the flannel petticoat simultaneously out of her hands.

'Do, there's a dear,' she said coaxingly. 'Think how I helped you with
your German the day before yesterday.'

'It's a shame,' vowed Angela Wilkins, retiring sulkily. 'I did ask first!'

'Never mind,' said Babs, soothingly; 'I'm sure to do it again before long;
I always do.'

Angela, however, found a more abiding consolation in Barbara's temporary
idleness.

'You're not doing anything for anybody, that's certain!' she threw back
at her jeeringly. 'Why, you're the only idle person in the room! Call that
being unselfish, indeed!'

Barbara hastened to clear herself of the reproach by picking up Mary
Wells's neatly made and spotless piece of white flannel. She was not
sure what it was meant for, as it was not sewed together anywhere;
and she had never been shown how to do the elaborate scallops that
ornamented the edge of it. But a trifle like want of skill made very
little difference to a seeker after self-sacrifice; and Babs recklessly
plunged her needle into the beginning of the next scallop, and entangled
the silk hopelessly. A cry