is. Big John Brown, indeed! Bully, indeed! Gardener's boy, indeed! How
could she and Cyril ever have said, ever have thought, such things?

Presently, for the boy had never had such a listener in his life before,
he told her of other men--Stephenson, Newton, Shakespeare--and Betty
took off her bonnet as her earnestness increased, and tucked it under
her arm after a way she had when agitated.

"Oh, I wish I was a boy," she said. "What's the good of a girl? What can
a girl do? Don't you know anything about self-made women?"

John knew very little. In fact he too very much doubted the "good of a
girl." He told her so quite bluntly, but added that she'd better make
the best of it.

"There _must_ be some self-made women," insisted Betty. "I'll ask father
to-night."

John thought deeply for a few minutes, seeing her distress. He really
ransacked his mind, for besides sorrow for her sorrowing he could
plainly see the admiration with which she regarded him, and he wanted to
show her that he knew something about women too.

"There's Joan of Arc," he said, "and--there's Grace Darling!"

But Betty was indignant. "They're in the history book!" she said.

John thought again, but could only shake his head.

"All women can do," he said, "is wash up, and cook dinners, and mend
clothes!"

Betty's lips quivered.

"I won't be a woman," she said, "I _won't_!"

John owned to sharing her craving to be rich, but he wanted to _make_
his wealth himself--which set Betty's imagination galloping down a new
road. _She_ had only thought hitherto of her grandfather's riches, which
had seemed to her and Cyril to be all the money there was in the world.

But now John had slid back a door and let her peep into all the glories
of a new world, and she had seen there wealth and fame to be had for the
earning--by men and boys!

"Try and find out about self-made women," she said, when he left her at
the turn through the bush. "See if there were any women artists, or
women inventors, or women pirates, or _anything_. Good-bye."

CHAPTER XII

BETTY IN THE LION'S DEN

So that it was John who showed Betty the thing in all its beauty. It was
he, who, so to speak, called her to the mountain top, and pointed out to
her the cities of the world to be climbed above. And it seemed to little
independent-hearted Betty to be the most glorious thing in the world to
climb upon one's own feet, pulling oneself upwards with one's own hands.

She wo