. I'm _glad_, not
sorry," she had declared to the scandalised Lavender. "I'm glad she'll
never come hobbling downstairs again, and sit all the long, long day in
one chair, waiting for it to end. I'm _glad_ she's forgotten all about
her back, and her feet, and her head, and her joints, and all the
thousand parts that ached, and could not rest. I'm _glad_ she doesn't
need any more spectacles, and sticks, and false teeth, nor to have
people shouting into her ear to make her hear. I'm thankful! If I'd
hated her I might have liked her to live on here, but I loved her, so
I'm glad. She has gone somewhere else, where she is happy, and
cheerful, and _whole_, and I hope her husband has met her, and that they
are having a lovely, lovely time together..."

Darsie was glad, too, in quite an open, unconcealed fashion, when a
legacy of a few thousand pounds lifted a little of the strain from her
father's busy shoulders, made it possible to send Harry and Russell to a
good boarding-school, continue Clemence's beloved music lessons, and
provide many needfuls for household use. It was not only pleasant but
absolutely thrilling to know that as long as she herself lived she
would, in addition, possess fifty pounds a year--practically a pound a
week--of her very, very own, so that even when she grew too old to
teach, she could retire to a tiny cottage in the country, and live the
simple life. In the meantime, however, she was young, and life
stretched ahead full of delicious possibilities and excitements.

Her great ambition had been achieved. She was a student at Cambridge;
the historic colleges whose names had so long been familiar on her lips
lay but a few streets away, while in her own college, close at hand,
along the very same corridor, lay other girls with whom she must work,
with whom she must play, whose lives must of a surety touch her own.

What would happen? How would she fare? When the last night of her
three-years course arrived, and she lay as now in this narrow white bed,
staring across the darkened room which had been her home, what would her
dreams be then? What pictures would arise in the gallery of her mind?
What faces smile at her out of the mist?

"Oh, God," sighed Darsie in a soft, involuntary appeal, "help me to be
good!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE AUCTION.

The next day Darsie and Hannah were interviewed by their several
coaches, male and female, received instructions as to their future work,