give it. I
give my own mother thirty pounds a year, so we are practically on the
same salary. Have _you_ a home where you can spend your holiday?
Holidays run away terribly with your money. They come to nearly four
months in the year."

For the first time those prolonged holidays appeared to Claire as a
privilege which had its reverse side. Friends in Brussels might
possibly house her for two or three weeks; she could not expect, she
would not wish them to do more; and at the end there would still remain
over three months! It was a new and disagreeable experience to look
forward to holidays with _dread_! For a whole two minutes she looked
thoroughly depressed, then her invincible optimism came to the top, and
she cried triumphantly--

"I'll take a holiday engagement!"

The English mistress shook her head.

"That's fatal! I tried it myself one summer. Went with a family to the
seaside, and was expected to play games with the children all day long,
and coach them in the evening. I began the term tired out, and nearly
collapsed before the end. Teaching is nerve-racking work, and if you
don't get a good spell off, it's as bad for the pupils as yourself. You
snap their heads off for the smallest trifle. Besides, it's folly to
wear oneself out any sooner than one need. It's bad enough to think of
the time when one has to retire. That's the nightmare which haunts us
more and more every year."

"Don't you think when the time comes you will be _glad_ to rest?" asked
innocent Claire, whereupon Miss Rhodes glared at her with indignant
eyes.

"We should be glad to rest, no doubt, but we don't exactly appreciate
the prospect of resting in the workhouse, and it's difficult to see
where else some of us are to go! There is no pension for High School-
mistresses, and we are bound to retire at fifty-five--if we can manage
to stick it out so long. Fifty-five seems a long way off to you--not
quite so long to me; when you reach forty it becomes to feel quite near.
Women are horribly long-lived, so the probability is that we'll live on
to eighty or more. Twenty-five years after leaving off work,
and--_where is the money to come from to keep us_? That's the question
which haunts us all when we look into our bank-books and find that, with
all our pains, we have only been able to save at the utmost two or three
hundred pounds."

Claire looked scared, but she recovered her composure with a swiftness
which her companio