ratitude that sprang to
Margaret's face at this answer. "You mustn't go away with the idea that I
tell everybody I meet about myself. You may not believe it after the way
I have taken you into my confidence, but you are the very first person to
whom I have ever mentioned my home or my parents since I said good-bye to
Ireland six years ago, and that you are the only person in the whole wide
world who knows of my visit to Signor Vanucci and what he told me, for I
have kept that a secret from every one. I could not even bring myself to
tell Miss McDonald about it--not that she would have been unsympathetic,
but simply because it was such a bitter disappointment that I could not
have borne to hear it discussed. Besides, she could not, however willing
to do so, have helped me in any way. I told you the school was in low
water. It had not been paying properly for some time, and that term Miss
McDonald decided that unless she got a great many more pupils at Easter
she would give it up altogether at the end of the summer term.

"Well, at Easter no fresh pupils applied to come, and so many left that
scarcely any remained in the school. I don't know what poor Miss McDonald
would have done, for I don't think she had saved much money, if a brother
that she had not seen for years had not written from Australia to say
that after many years of struggling he was now a rich man, and that he
hoped she would go out there and make her home with him. And she sailed
for Melbourne last week."

CHAPTER VI

MARGARET AND ELEANOR CHANGE PLACES

"Miss McDonald sailed for Australia last week!" ejaculated Margaret in
the utmost astonishment. "But what is to become of you, then? Are you
quite alone?"

"Quite," responded Eleanor, for whom her solitary state evidently
possessed no terrors, for she smiled at Margaret's horrified tone. "Dear
old Miss McDonald! If I would have consented, she would have taken me
with her, I think, and chanced her brother's dismay when we got there.
She was dreadfully distressed at the idea of leaving me behind; but what
could she have done for me if she had remained? As I told her, she had
done more for me than any one could possibly have expected of her, in
keeping me, and giving me what education I possess, during the last six
years. And it is not as if I had lost my situation through her going away
either, for I have been left as a legacy to Miss Marvel. Miss Marvel
bought the goodwill of the school," she a