r. For reasons of his own the doctor had forbidden
Marjory to go into it. She should do so on her fifteenth birthday, but
not before. Lisbeth went in once a week with pail, broom, and duster,
but she always carefully locked the door behind her, and Marjory knew
nothing of the room or its contents. "Some bonnie day," was all that the
old woman would say when she questioned her.

Mary Ann continued,--

"It seems a shame you can't be made a lady of too."

"I can be a lady without going to school," said Marjory sulkily.

The other looked at her in surprise.

"Oh no, you can't. Who is there to teach you? You have to learn manners
and deportment and accomplishments and all that sort of thing first. I
don't see that you've got any chance here, you poor little thing,"
patronizingly.

"I don't care," said Marjory, knowing in her heart that she did care
beyond everything, and that her greatest desire was to learn all sorts
of things. "I don't care a pin," she repeated.

"Yes, you do, or you wouldn't get so red," said Mary Ann provokingly.
Then she continued, "Your uncle's queer, isn't he?"

"What do you mean by 'queer'?"

"Well--queer--in his head, you know. People say he is, and, anyhow, he
does queer things--keeping that room shut up, and all that. I should say
he _must_ be a little bit mad."

"He _isn't_," indignantly. "He's a very clever, celebrated man."

Mary Ann went off into peals of laughter.

"Oh dear! who told you that?" she cried at last.

"Lisbeth," defiantly.

Another peal of laughter greeted this statement.

"It really is too funny; you little simpleton, to believe such a thing.
Why, if he was celebrated, he would be rich enough to send you to
school, and he wouldn't let you sew and dust the way you do, just like
any village girl. I _never_ dust; mamma doesn't wish me to." And Mary
Ann looked at her white hands admiringly, and shot a glance, which
Marjory felt rather than saw, at the brown ones nervously clasping and
unclasping themselves.

"I wonder," continued her tormentor, "that you don't insist on being
sent to school, so that you could learn to earn your own living. I've
heard mamma say your uncle gets no money for your keep; no letters ever
come from foreign parts from your father. It must be strange to have a
father you've never seen. It must be horrid to be like you, because,
really, when you come to think of it, you are no better off than a
charity child, are you?"

But Mary Ann had