een to her, and how much she loved her.
For her sake, she would do all she could to control her temper and her
tongue.

She had coloured again--with indignation this time--hot words had sprung
to her lips in defence of Lucy, but she closed them determinedly, and
choked the words back again. She felt that she could say nothing; she
felt, too, that Lucy would not wish her to say anything. She could not
explain so as to make her granny understand that it was not Lucy's fault
that she was rude and ill-tempered. It was by acts, not words, that she
could serve Lucy best. And for her sake she _would_ try. She would try
her very hardest to control her temper and her tongue. The determination
brought some comfort to her poor troubled heart. At any rate, she would
be doing something that Lucy would be glad about.

Her confession, though, remained unspoken.

CHAPTER VIII.

Mona did try to be good, she tried hard, but she was very, very unhappy.
She missed her home, she missed Lucy, and her father, and her freedom.
She longed, too, with an intolerable longing, for the sight and the sound
of the sea. She had never, till now that she had lost them, realised how
dearly she loved the quaint little steep and rambling village, with the
sea at its foot, and the hills behind it. She was always homesick.

Perhaps if she had been sent to Hillside, and it had been her plain duty
to live there, and nowhere else, she might have felt more happy and
settled. Or, if granny had been the same indulgent, sympathetic granny as
of old, but she had placed herself where she was by her own foolish,
unkind act, which she now bitterly repented; and she was there with a
cloud resting on her character and motives. She had shown herself
ungrateful and unkind; she had played a coward's part, and had bitterly
pained her father and Lucy.

They did not reproach her--she would have felt better had they done so--
but she knew. And, after all, granny did not want her, or so it seemed!

Mona did not realise that her grandmother was really seriously unwell,
and that her irritability she could not help. Mrs. Barnes did not know it
herself. Mona only realised that she was almost always cross,
that nothing pleased her, that she never ran and fetched and carried,
as she used to do, while Mona sat by the fire and read. It was granny who
sat by the fire now. She did not read, though. She said her eyes pained
her, and her head ached too much. Sh