ut for years and years. At
eleven years old it was hard enough to know about herself--her naughty,
absent-minded, story-book-loving self. Her mother said that she loved
story-books entirely too much, that they made her absent-minded and
forgetful, and her mother's words were proving themselves true this very
afternoon. She was a real trouble to herself and there was no one near to
"confess" to; she never could talk about herself unless enveloped in the
friendly darkness, and then the confessor must draw her out, step by
step, with perfect frankness and sympathy; even then, a sigh, or sob, or
quickly drawn breath and half inarticulate expression revealed more than
her spoken words.

She was one of the children that are left to themselves. Only Linnet knew
the things she cared most about; even when Linnet laughed at her, she
could feel the sympathetic twinkle in her eye and the sympathetic
undertone smothered in her laugh.

It was sunset, and she was watching it from the schoolroom window, the
clouds over the hill were brightening and brightening and a red glare
shone over the fields of snow. It was sunset and the schoolroom clock
pointed to a quarter of five. The schoolroom was chilly, for the fire had
died out half an hour since. Hollis Rheid had shoved big sticks into the
stove until it would hold no more and had opened the draft, whispering to
her as he passed her seat that he would keep her warm at any rate. But
now she was shivering, although she had wrapped herself in her coarse
green and red shawl, and tapped her feet on the bare floor to keep them
warm; she was hungry, too; the noon lunch had left her unsatisfied, for
she had given her cake to Rie Blauvelt in return for a splendid Northern
Spy, and had munched the apple and eaten her two sandwiches wishing all
the time for more. Leaving the work on her slate unfinished, she had
dived into the depths of her home-made satchel and discovered two crumbs
of molasses cake. That was an hour ago. School had closed at three
o'clock to-day because it was Friday and she had been nearly two hours
writing nervously on her slate or standing at the blackboard making
hurried figures. For the first time in her life Marjorie West had been
"kept in." And that "Lucy" book hidden in her desk was the cause of it;
she had taken it out for just one delicious moment, and the moment had
extended itself into an hour and a half, and the spelling lesson was
unlearned and the three hard exam