into Faith's bedroom; "the dress is as good as new, but I have grown
so, and--and I will lend you my writing-case, and a nice hairbrush."
And before Faith had recovered herself sufficiently to speak, Audrey had
darted away again and locked herself in her own room.

The sacrifice had cost her more than anyone would ever know. The thought
of the lost holiday, and such a holiday, was hard to bear, and a great
longing for the sea was tugging at her heart-strings until the pain of it
was almost unendurable.

CHAPTER XIV.

Audrey finished her clean copy of her play and posted it on the very day
the family departed for Ilfracombe. But she did not tell Faith so.
Faith must still believe that Audrey wanted nothing so much as a peaceful
time at home for her work.

"And now I shall have to wait three whole weeks before I hear anything,"
she thought dolefully, as she hurried home from the post office and into
the house by way of the back door, before any of the others were down.

She was rather surprised and disappointed that she felt none of the
thrills and delight she had expected to feel when she at last sent off her
first piece of work to try its fortune. Indeed, she felt nothing but a
painful consciousness of its faults, which was very depressing.

And still more depressing was it to feel that she would not have Irene
there to talk things over with, and get encouragement from. Those three
long weeks of waiting she would have to live through alone, without anyone
to confide her anxieties to, or to give her fresh hope.

Under the circumstances it was not easy, all things considered, to keep up
a smiling face, and live up to the joyful excitement of the five
travellers. And as she left the station with her father, after the train
with its fluttering array of hands and handkerchiefs had glided away out
of sight round the sunny curve, she had hard work to keep the tears out of
her eyes, and the bitterness out of her heart.

Mr. Carlyle had to go and pay some calls in the village, so Audrey walked
home alone; and very, very much alone she felt, after the lively
companionship of the last month. The garden, when she reached it, wore a
new air of desolation, and when she caught sight of one of Debby's dolls
lying forgotten on the grass, she picked it up and hugged it
sympathetically, out of pity for its loneliness. The silence in the house
and out was just as oppressive. Audrey, still holding Debby's old doll,
hur