"Rubbish!" thought Dorothy, with an effort to dispel the black shadow. "I'll ask Aunt Barbara, and I've no doubt she'll easily explain it all and set everything right." By this time the train had passed Ash Hill, Burnlea, and Latchworth, and had arrived at Hurford, Dorothy's station. She stepped out of the compartment, so preoccupied with her reflections that she would have forgotten her books, if a fellow-passenger had not handed them to her. She scarcely noticed the Rector and his children, who were standing on the platform, and, turning a deaf ear to the youngest boy, who called to her to wait for them, she hurried off alone along the road. It was a pleasant walk to her home, between green hedges, and with a view of woods and distant hills. Hurford was quite a country place, and could boast of thatched cottages, a market cross, and a pair of stocks, although it lay barely twelve miles from the great manufacturing city of Coleminster. Dorothy's destination was a little, quaint, old-fashioned stone house that stood close by the roadside at the beginning of the village street. A thick, well-clipped holly hedge protected from prying eyes a garden where summer flowers were still blooming profusely, a strip of lawn was laid out for croquet, and a small orchard, at the back, held a moderate crop of pears and apples. Dorothy ran in through the creeper-covered porch, slammed her books on the hall table, then, descending two steps, entered the low-ceiled, oak-panelled dining-room, and rushed to fling her arms round a lady who was sitting doing fancy work near the open window. "Here I am at last, Auntie! Oh, I feel as if I hadn't seen you for a hundred years! I'm in the Upper Fourth, but it's been a hateful day. I never thought school was so horrid before. I'm very disappointed and disgusted and abominably cross." "Poor little woman! What's the matter?" said Aunt Barbara, taking Dorothy's face in her hands, as the girl knelt by her side, and trying to kiss away the frown that rested there. "You certainly don't look as if you had been enjoying yourself." "Enjoying myself? I should think not! We had an election for the wardenship, and my name was on the list, and I might perhaps have won if the others hadn't been so mean; but I didn't, and Hope Lawson has got it!" "We can't always win, can we? Never mind! It's something that your name was on the list of candidates. All the girls who lost will be feeling equally disappointed. Suppose you just forget about it, go and take off your things, and tell Martha to make some buttered toast." Dorothy laughed. Already her face had lost its injured and woeful expression. "That's as good as saying: 'Don't make a fuss about nothing'. All right, Auntie, I'm going. But I warn you that this is only a respite, and I mean to give you a full and detailed list of all my particular grievances after tea. So make up your mind to it, and brace your dear nerves!"