ow it doesn't seem worth while for anything to look pretty. I used
to love the sunsets, but now I hate them. What is the good of their
being so beautiful and filling the sky with red and gold, if _she_ isn't
here to see them? And what is the good of trying to be good and clever
if she isn't here to be pleased with me? Oh dear! oh dear! Nothing will
ever be any good any more."

Christopher laid an awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began
stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's
more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that
I can do to make it up to you, somehow?"

"No; nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me any more; and how could a
great, stupid boy like you make up to me for having lost her?" moaned
poor little Elisabeth, with the selfishness of absorbing grief.

"Well, anyway, I am as fond of you as she was, for nobody could be
fonder of anybody than I am of you."

"That doesn't help. I don't miss her so because she loved me, but
because I loved her; and I shall never, never love any one else as much
as long as I live."

"Oh yes, you will, I expect," replied Christopher, who even then knew
Elisabeth better than she knew herself.

"No--I shan't; and I should hate myself if I did."

Elisabeth fretted so terribly after her Cousin Anne that she grew paler
and thinner than ever; and Miss Farringdon was afraid that the girl
would make herself really ill, in spite of her wiry constitution. After
much consultation with many friends, she decided to send Elisabeth to
school, for it was plain that she was losing her vitality through lack
of an interest in life; and school--whatever it may or may not
supply--invariably affords an unfailing amount of new interests. So
Elisabeth went to Fox How--a well-known girls' school not a hundred
miles from London--so called in memory of Dr. Arnold, according to whose
principles the school was founded and carried on.

It would be futile to attempt to relate the history of Elisabeth
Farringdon without telling in some measure what her school-days did for
her; and it would be equally futile to endeavour to convey to the
uninitiated any idea of what that particular school meant--and still
means--to all its daughters.

When Elisabeth had left her girlhood far behind her, the mere mention of
the name, Fox How, never failed to send thrills all through her, as God
save the Queen, and Home, sweet Home have a knack of doing; and f