strong and firm mountain up in the sunshine, on which it was her
privilege to stand, despite what was going on below, she did not
understand. She did not know what effect the weather and the sense of
fatigue were having on her, and she felt not only mortified, but
alarmed, that her joy had so soon gone out in cloud and gloom.

If she could only just run around the corner to see Eurie a minute, or
up the hill to Flossy's home, how much it would help her; and the
thought that she was actually looking to Flossy Shipley and Eurie
Mitchell for help of any sort brought the first smile that she had
indulged in that morning; she was certainly changed when she could look
to them for comfort or sympathy.

Is there anyone reading this account of an every day life who does not
understand, by past experience, just how trying a first day at school
is, when teachers and scholars have come out from the influence of a
long summer vacation? Next week, or even to-morrow, they will have
battled with, and, in a measure, choked the spirit of disgust, or
homesickness, or weariness, with which they come back from play to work;
but to-day nothing seems quite so hard in all the world as to turn from
the hundred things that have interested and delighted them, and settle
down to grammar, and philosophy, and algebra.

Teachers and scholars alike are apt to feel the depression of such
circumstances; and when you add to the other discomforts, that of a
steady, pouring rain, with a sound of fall in every whiff of wind, you
will understand that Marion was to have comparatively little help from
outside influences. She felt the gloom in her heart deepen as the day
went on. She was astonished and mortified at herself to find that the
old feelings of irritability and sharpness still held her in grasp; she
was not free from _them_, at least.

Her tongue was as strongly tempted to be sarcastic, and her tone to be
stern, as ever they had been. None of the scholars helped her. Those of
them who were neither gloomy, nor listless, nor inclined to be cross,
were simply _silly_; they laughed on every possible occasion, with or
without an excuse; they devised ways and means to draw off the attention
of these who made faint efforts to be studious; and, in short, were
decidedly the most provoking of all the elements of the day. Marion
found herself more than once curling her lip in the old sarcastic way at
the inconsistencies and improprieties of those among her