could possibly keep up to
it. Many slacked off entirely, but Gwen could not, dared not slack.
She knew Miss Roscoe was watching her work, and that very much
depended upon her reports for the next year or two. Father had thrown
out a few hints that had stirred her ambition and raised wild hopes
for the future. She was aware that there were several good
scholarships from Rodenhurst, and visions of College began to dawn on
her horizon.

"'Gwen Gascoyne, B.A.', sounds no end. It would be worth the grind. I
mayn't be the beauty of the family, but I believe I've got the best
share of the brains. Beatrice would be proud of me if I took my
degree. I must make something of this essay if I 'burn the midnight'.
Miss Roscoe will expect me to turn up trumps. I'll toil like a navvy!"

So Gwen decided, and stuck to her resolution. She had an undoubted
capacity for work, a power of application and of steady plodding that
were of immense service, as well as more brilliant gifts. She attacked
the question at once. The Victorian writers offered a fairly wide
choice of subject. She hesitated at first between George Eliot and
Dickens, and finally selected Thomas Carlyle. Something about the
rugged old prophet attracted her, and she thought he would be a
congenial theme for her pen. She spent every spare moment in reading
his biographies or his works, till she felt she had him at her
fingers' ends. Then, with a mass of notes as a foundation, she began
her essay.

Most young writers undergo the same first agonies of composition: the
vainly sought simile, the sentence that will not turn nicely, the
tiresome word that crops up too often, yet for which there seems no
adequate substitute; the sudden lack of ideas, or the non-ability to
clothe those one has in suitable language.

Gwen wrote and burnt, and wrote and burnt again, till at last she
managed something, not at all up to the ideal of her imagination, but
the best her limited literary experience could produce. She refused to
show it to anybody at home, and bore it off to school to read over and
correct during the dinner hour. She was sitting at her desk, busy
altering sentences and erasing words, when Netta came into the room.

"Hello, you old solitary hermit!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing
here, with your nose buried in an exercise book? There's no getting at
you nowadays. You'll grow old before your time, Gwen, my child! Come
out this instant, and play basket-ball."

"Can't,