ht have
known it. I did know it all along. You were booked to go."

"Why, Laura?" Miss Quincey was mystified and a little hurt.

"Because"--a sinister convulsion passed over the ugly little
pariah face--"because"--the Mad Hatter had learnt the force of
under-statement--"because I _like_ you."

At that Miss Quincey broke down. "My dear little girl--I am going because
I am too old to stay."

"Write to me, dear," she said at the last moment; "let me know how you
are getting on."

But she never knew. The Mad Hatter did not write. In fact she never wrote
anything again, not even verses. She was handed over next term to Miss
Quincey's brilliant and efficient successor, who made her work hard, with
the result that the Mad Hatter got ill of a brain fever just before the
Christmas holidays and was never fit for any more work; and never became
Classical Mistress or anything else in the least distinguished. But this
is by the way.

As the College clock struck one, Miss Quincey walked home as usual and
went up into her bedroom without a word. She opened a drawer and took
from it her Post Office Savings Bank book and looked over her account.
There stood to her credit the considerable sum of twenty-seven pounds
four shillings and eight pence. No, not quite that, for the blouse, the
abominable blouse, had been paid for out of her savings and it had cost a
guinea. Twenty-six pounds three shillings and eight pence was all that
she had saved in five-and-twenty years. This, with the term's salary
which Miss Cursiter had insisted on, was enough to keep her going for a
year. And a year is a long time. She came slowly downstairs to the
drawing-room where her aunt was dozing and dreaming in her chair. There
still hung about her figure the indefinable dignity that had awed Miss
Cursiter. If she was afraid of Mrs. Moon she was too proud to show her
fear.

"This morning," she said simply, "I received my dismissal."

The old lady looked up dazed, not with the news but with her dream. Miss
Quincey repeated her statement.

"Do you mean you are not going back to that place there?" she asked
mildly.

"I am never going back."

Still with dignity she waited for the burst of feeling she felt to be
justifiable in the circumstances. None came; neither anger, nor
indignation, nor contempt, not even surprise. In fact the Old Lady was
smiling placidly, as she was wont to smile under the spell of the dream.

Slowly, very slowly, it was dawning