The precise governess carefully chosen by Aunt Bertha had not helped matters. She found her pupil bright indeed, but only ready to work by fits and starts, and quite unmoved by fear of punishment, or promise of reward. So strong at last had the friction grown that Miss Perkins had herself resigned her post, and recommended that Aldred should be packed off to school. "I have done my utmost," she said to Miss Laurence, "but I feel that I am a complete failure. I have no influence over Aldred, and she is not making the slightest progress. In the circumstances I cannot honestly continue to teach her. In my opinion a little strict discipline is what she requires, and the sooner she experiences it the better." The decision to send her away (long held over her head as a threat), instead of daunting Aldred, had delighted her. Aunt Bertha was much relieved. She had dreaded a storm when the question was raised, and though she considered it a bad characteristic in a girl to be glad to leave home, she felt it removed a difficulty when her niece accepted the situation so readily. To Aldred the idea of forming herself on the prim pattern of her aunt was intolerable. She was ready to copy anybody whom she loved and admired, but to be obliged to repress her enthusiasms, and reduce her ideals to the level of the commonplace, seemed like being forced into a box too small to contain her. "Aunt Bertha never understands," she thought. "She says I must try to grow up now, and be sensible. If growing up means getting cold and calm and stupid, and taking everything as a matter of course, I'd rather not. I'll just stop a child always, however hard they may try to make me different!" Such was Aldred at the time our story begins,--a mass of contradictions, so wayward and yet so winning, a mixture of good impulses and weak points, equally ready to join a crusade or to follow the multitude to do evil; waiting, like a gaily painted but rudderless vessel, to be launched on to the stormy ocean of school life. CHAPTER II Mabel Farrington