an unsuccessful man. I have had great
compensations, and have discovered that obscurity has many lessons which
I needed badly to learn. Don't be too anxious for honour and glory;
there are other things better worth having!"

"The worst of old people is--they _will_ preach!" said Rhoda to herself
as she walked home across the Park. "He is a good old thing, the Vicar,
but a terrible bore. Unsuccessful! I should think he _is_
unsuccessful, with half-a-dozen children, and that wretched little bit
of a house, and a poor stipend. No wonder he gets prosy. Young people
understand young people best, and Miss Everett was quite right when she
said it was no use trying to stuff lessons down your throat until you
were ready to swallow them. If all the fathers, and mothers, and
brothers, and vicars in the world were to lecture me now, and tell me to
take it easy, and not to worry about the examination, it would have no
effect. In another two days I go back to school, and then--then--" She
stood still in the midst of the bare, wintry scene, and clasped her
hands together passionately.

"Rhoda Chester, you must work, you must win! If you don't do well in
that examination, it will break your heart!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

"IF I PASS--"

The Christmas holidays were over, the Easter holidays were over, and
spring was back once more. On the slope over which the new students had
gaily tobogganed two months before the primroses were showing their
dainty, yellow faces, and the girl gardeners were eagerly watching the
progress of their bulbs. Hearing that other plots boasted nothing rarer
than pheasant eye and Lent lilies, Rhoda had promptly written home for a
supply of Horsfieldi and Emperor, which were expected to put everything
else in the shade, but, alas! they were coming up in feeble fashion, and
showed little sign of flowering. "Another year," the gardener said,
"they would do better another year! Bulbs were never so strong the
first season." Whereat Rhoda chafed with impatience. Always another
time, and not _now_!

Always postponement, delay, uncertainty! Try as she might, checks
seemed to be waiting on every side, and she could never succeed in
distinguishing herself above her fellows. In moments of depression it
seemed that she was as insignificant now as on the day when she first
joined the school; but at other times she was happily conscious of a
change in the mental attitude towards herself. Though still