saw fit to establish
a Girls' High School, and the moderateness of the fees enabled these
sisters to receive an intellectual training wholly incompatible with the
material conditions of their life. To the relatively poor (who are so
much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases
a mocking cruelty. The burden of their brother's support made it very
difficult for Maud and Dora even to dress as became their intellectual
station; amusements, holidays, the purchase of such simple luxuries as
were all but indispensable to them, could not be thought of. It resulted
that they held apart from the society which would have welcomed them,
for they could not bear to receive without offering in turn. The
necessity of giving lessons galled them; they felt--and with every
reason--that it made their position ambiguous. So that, though they
could not help knowing many people, they had no intimates; they
encouraged no one to visit them, and visited other houses as little as
might be.

In Marian Yule they divined a sympathetic nature. She was unlike any
girl with whom they had hitherto associated, and it was the impulse of
both to receive her with unusual friendliness. The habit of reticence
could not be at once overcome, and Marian's own timidity was an obstacle
in the way of free intercourse, but Jasper's conversation at tea helped
to smooth the course of things.

'I wish you lived anywhere near us,' Dora said to their visitor, as the
three girls walked in the garden afterwards, and Maud echoed the wish.

'It would be very nice,' was Marian's reply. 'I have no friends of my
own age in London.'

'None?'

'Not one!'

She was about to add something, but in the end kept silence.

'You seem to get along with Miss Yule pretty well, after all,' said
Jasper, when the family were alone again.

'Did you anticipate anything else?' Maud asked.

'It seemed doubtful, up at Yule's house. Well, get her to come here
again before I go. But it's a pity she doesn't play the piano,' he
added, musingly.

For two days nothing was seen of the Yules. Jasper went each afternoon
to the stream in the valley, but did not again meet Marian. In the
meanwhile he was growing restless. A fortnight always exhausted his
capacity for enjoying the companionship of his mother and sisters, and
this time he seemed anxious to get to the end of his holiday. For all
that, there was no continuance of the domestic bickering which had
begun. Whatev