to grow more puckery every moment, and she wondered
whether it would ever be any better. It did not feel as if it would,
and she could not be persuaded to taste a ripe persimmon, for she had
had enough of persimmons. She emptied her basket out, and did not want
to touch another, though the girls assured her that the ripe ones were
delicious.

She was very glad when at last the girls had gathered as many as they
wanted, and they were ready to go home again.

She went upstairs to her room, and Aunt Emma did what she could to
relieve the puckered little mouth; but there was but little that could
be done except to wait patiently for time to take the puckers out of it.

Ruby was quite sure that it would take a year, and when she woke up the
following morning and found that there was nothing to remind her of the
persimmon, she was delighted as well as surprised, but it was a long
time before she wanted to hear any more about persimmons.

CHAPTER XXI.

MAUDE.

If Maude's mother could have looked into the school and watched her
little daughter for a day, I am sure she would have found it hard to
believe that she was the same child as the selfish, self-willed little
girl, who had made every one else miserable as well as herself if she
could not have her own way when she was at home.

School life was very hard for Maude in a great many ways, and she had
been more homesick than any of the other girls,--not so much because
she wanted to see her father and mother as because she wanted to go
where she could have her own way and do as she pleased.

All her life she had been accustomed to having her own way, and after
such training it was very hard for her to submit to the same rules to
which the other girls had to submit, and to obey her teachers. It was
a new experience to her to find that her fine clothes did not win for
her any esteem, and that unless she showed herself kind and obliging to
her schoolmates, they did not care to have anything to do with her.

It was not altogether Maude's fault that she had been so selfish; it
was partly because she had never been taught to be unselfish, and she
had grown so used to putting herself and her own comfort before that of
every one else, that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to
do, and she was surprised when every one else did not do so too.
Nothing could have been better for her than to come to this quiet home
school, where she could find a friend who wou