soon—if you would rather stay over Sunday, I will arrange...”

Darsie bit her lips in the desperate resolve not to cry, but to carry off the situation with a high air.

“If I’m to go at all, I’d rather go at once, and get it over. There’s nothing to be gained by delay. ‘Better to die by sudden shock than perish piecemeal on the rock.’”

“But you will want to say goodbye to your friends, dear; you will have little arrangements to make...” Mrs Garnett was all nervousness and anxiety to appease, but after the manner of victims Darsie felt a perverse satisfaction in rejecting overtures, even when by so doing she doubly punished herself.

“I don’t mean to say goodbye. I don’t wish to see any one before I go. I hate scenes.”

“Well, well! just as you please, dear. After all, it is for a very short time. Eight weeks will soon pass.”

Silence. Every youthful face at the table was set in an eloquent declaration that eight weeks was an eternity, a waste, a desert of space. Mr Garnett put down his newspaper and hurriedly left the room. He had the usual male horror of scenes, and, moreover, Darsie was his special pet, and his own nerves were on edge at the thought of the coming separation. If the child cried or appealed to him for protection, he would not like to say what he might do. Flight appeared to be his safest course, but Darsie felt a pang of disappointment and wounded love at this desertion of her cause, and the smart did not help to improve her temper.

“Aunt Maria wishes to see you, dear, as soon as you have finished your breakfast,” continued Mrs Garnett, elaborately conciliatory. “Father and I are very grateful to her for her interest in you, but you know, dear, how we feel about losing you, how we sympathise with your disappointment! We are convinced that in the end this chance will be for your benefit; but in the meantime it is very hard. We are sorry for you, dear.”

“And I,” declared Darsie coldly, “am sorry for Aunt Maria!”

She pushed back her chair and stalked out of the room, while her brothers and sisters stared after her agape. Along the narrow oil-clothed hall she went, up the steep, narrow staircase to the little third-floor bedroom, the only place on earth which was her very own. There was nothing luxurious about it, nothing of any intrinsic value or beauty, but in the eyes of its occupant every separate article was 

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