thout
noticing her in the least, and the breach seemed as wide as ever.

It was Saturday, and except for mending and stocking darning the girls
might amuse themselves as they wished. The two friends had planned to
finish their garden and to plant the delightful collection of
snowdrops, crocuses, and tulips which Mrs. Lindsay had sent them.
Sylvia carried the box down, and a trowel, and set to work in a
half-hearted manner, putting in little groups and rows, though she
certainly was not enjoying herself. Linda, who was equally unhappy,
waited ten minutes, then, arriving with her spade, began solemnly to
dig up her root of hepatica and her clump of primroses.

"Do you want to put them here?" enquired Sylvia anxiously, moving some
of her bulbs out of the way.

"No, thank you," replied Linda with cold politeness. "I'm going back
to my old garden." And, carrying her treasures in her arms, she
stalked away.

Poor Sylvia felt this was the last straw. To be thus deserted was a
cruel blow; she would never enjoy her flowers alone, however lovely
they might prove. She had written for the bulbs chiefly on Linda's
account, and if they were not to share them she did not care to plant
them at all. She flung down her trowel, and, walking away to a retired
part of the grounds, sat down on a seat under a hawthorn tree and
began to cry as if her heart would break.

She had not been there very long before chance, or something better
than chance, brought Mercy Ingledew to the same spot with her Latin
grammar. As monitress of the upper landing she had the whole of the
third class under her care, and, seeing one of her charges in such
distress, she came at once to enquire the cause.

"You needn't be at all afraid to tell me, dear," she said. "If you've
got yourself into a scrape it's my business to help you. Just tell me
everything as you would to your elder sister."

"I haven't got any sister," sobbed Sylvia.

"No more have I, I only wish I had, so I'm going to pretend now that
you're mine. What's the trouble? I don't like to see my third class
girls crying."

Sylvia never forgot how kind Mercy was. She listened patiently to the
whole matter, and then sat thinking for a while, and stroking Sylvia's
fluffy hair.

"There seem to have been faults on both sides," she said at last.
"Doesn't it strike you, dear, that it's just a little selfish of you
to want to keep Linda entirely to yourself?"

"But she's my friend!" said Sylvia in