a blazing fire.
No wonder that she drooped. She seldom had even a drive to console her.

"Because we are only _middling_," she explained to herself. "If we were
poor, we could go on excursions with the charity children; and if we
were rich, we'd travel to the mountains or the sea. We're only middling,
so we stay at home."

At first Cassy was ready to envy Marion Van Dysk, who started with her
mamma and a dozen trunks for Saratoga; and she breathed a sigh over the
fortunes of Lillie Downs, whose father had built a cottage on the coast
of Maine, where the ocean surged up to the very piazza.

But by-and-by Cassy forgot her woes, such a delightful piece of news
came to her ears. Her mother told it to her one evening, and Cassy never
went to sleep for two whole hours after she was in bed, so excited was
she by the bliss that was to be hers in September.

The truth was that Mr. Deane had come to the city for the express
purpose of giving his little daughter the benefit of no less an
establishment than Madame McLeod's "Boarding and Day School for Young
Ladies." Cassy knew that Marion Van Dysk and Lillie Downs and a host of
other damsels were also "to enjoy its advantages." Cassy was overwhelmed
with the honor and the joy of it all. She had always been a solitary
chick up in her country home, and it seemed almost too good to be true
that she was actually to have real live girls to play with, and that she
could talk of "_our_ games," and "_our_ history class."

What matter that the August sun scorched and flamed? What matter if the
bricks, baked through and through by day, took their revenge by keeping
the air as hot as a furnace all night?

Cassy was as gay as a lark, and sang and chattered by the hour, while
she helped her mother run up the breadths of an extraordinary changeable
silk gown, which had been cut over from one that had been her
grandmother's. This was to be Cassy's school-dress. Think what
richness--silk for every-day wear!

"We can't afford to buy anything new," argued Mrs. Deane. Still, it was
a solemn moment when the key snapped in the lock of the cedar chest, and
that changeable silk was taken from the place where it had lain these
thirty years, wrapped in a pillow-case and two towels.

Cassy fairly gasped when the scissors cut into its gorgeousness. She
gasped even more when Mrs. Deane also brought from the chest six yards
of an ancient bottle-green ribbon to trim the robe withal. To be sure,
the ri