zy,
unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking
forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of
school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs.
Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's
ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as
she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape
from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted
some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation.
Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present.

The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to
Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the
result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass
of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of.
She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the
Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But
she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr.
Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more
likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to
answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort
to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange
stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit.

At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was
beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an
end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a
familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was
merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her
slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any
idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect
small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed.
She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and
boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their
return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod
and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"--while the
other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for
deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the
s