chools in New Zealand, and excellent
opportunities for study of every kind. Poor Rona, unfortunately, has had
to live on a farm far away from civilization, and her education and
welfare in every respect seem to have been utterly neglected. Don't take
her as a type of New Zealand! But she'll soon improve if we're all
prepared to help her. I'm glad you're ready to be her real friend."

"I'll try my best!" sighed Ulyth.

CHAPTER IV

A Blackberry Foray

Having made up her mind to accept the responsibility which fate, through
the agency of the magazine editor, had thrust upon her, Ulyth,
metaphorically speaking, set her teeth, and began to take Rona seriously
in hand. Being ten months older than her protegee, in a higher form,
and, moreover, armed with full authority from Miss Bowes, she assumed
command of the bedroom, and tried to regulate the chaos that reigned on
her comrade's side of it. Rona submitted with an air of amused good
nature to have her clothes arranged in order in her drawers, her shoes
put away in the cupboard, and her toilet articles allotted places on her
washstand and dressing-table. She even consented to give some thought to
her personal appearance, and borrowed Ulyth's new manicure set.

"You're mighty particular," she objected. "What does it all matter? Miss
Bowes gave me such a talking-to, and said I'd got to do exactly what you
told me; and before I came, Dad rubbed it into me to copy you for all I
was worth, so I suppose I'll have to try. I guess you'll find it a job
to civilize me though." And her eyes twinkled.

Ulyth thought, with a mental sigh, that she probably would find it "a
job".

"No one bothered about it at home," Rona continued cheerfully. "Dad did
say sometimes I was growing up a savage, but Mrs. Barker never cared.
She let me do what I liked, so long as I didn't trouble her. She was no
lady! We couldn't get a lady to stay at our out-of-the-way block. Dad
used to be a swell in England once, but that was before I was born."

Ulyth began to understand, and her disgust changed to a profound pity. A
motherless girl who had run wild in the backwoods, her father probably
out all day, her only female guide a woman of the backwoods, whose
manners were presumably of the roughest--this had been Rona's training.
No wonder she lacked polish!

"When I compare her home with my home and my lovely mother," thought
Ulyth, "yes--there's certainly a vast amount to be passed on."

The o