was
laden with a great bundle of exercises to correct at home, presented a
dejected figure, tired out and three-fourths beaten. So the Miss Dyers
thought as they rolled past her in their carriage, and debated whether
they should not stop to pick her up and save her walking the rest of the
road. But she was such a fright, positively bedraggled with mud enough
to soil the cushions, and she could speak of nothing now save the
Deweshurst Girls' Day School and her duties there. It was too tiresome
to be borne with. Poor Bell was not clever, she was one-idea'd and slow
at work like Ned, and she had also his conscientiousness. Probably
promotion was not for her; she must drudge on as best she might. Her
great encouragement at this time, next to her father's and sister's
approbation and sympathy, was, as she told Dora, the prospect of
spending her Easter holidays with Ned at his station-house. What did she
care for its being only a station-house? after the fagging school-work
it would be great fun to put Ned's small house in order, and play at
housekeeping with him for a fortnight. She was bent on making him
comfortable, and cheering him as well as herself. If the weather would
but be fine they might have glorious rambles on the Yorkshire moors when
no trains were due.

Colonel Russell was sailing once more for India, to lay his bones there
without fail, the little Doctor prophesied sadly. In the meantime he had
got, and been glad to get, a subordinate post in his old field. At the
last moment, after he had established Mrs. Russell and her children in a
cheerful house in Bath, he made up his mind to take his grown-up
daughter out with him. But she was not to stay in his bungalow, for he
was going to a small out-of-the-way station where there would be no
accommodation or society in the barrack circle for a solitary young
lady. Fanny was to be left with a cousin of her father's, in the Bombay
Presidency. The lady had offered to take charge of her, and have her for
a long visit.

Did Annie and Rose know what that meant? Could they form an indignant,
affronted guess? "Father said," Dora quoted, "that if Colonel Russell,
an honourable gentleman and gallant officer, had not lived in the old
days and had his feelings blunted to the situation, he would never have
consented to such an arrangement for his daughter. But he had seen his
sisters come out to India for the well-understood purpose of getting
married to any eligible man in wa