"If I weren't going home to Aunt Barbara now, I should run away," she thought. "It would be dreadful to have to endure this all the evening. Oh dear, I hate the place, and I hate Miss Tempest, and I hate the girls, and everything, and everybody!" Poor Dorothy carried a very sore heart back to Holly Cottage that evening, but she cheered up when she entered the pretty little sitting-room, with its bright fire and a cosy tea laid ready on the oak table. After the storms and whirlwinds of school, home seemed such a haven of refuge, and Aunt Barbara--who always understood--so utterly different a personality from Miss Tempest. "I'm cross and horrid and disagreeable and altogether fractious, Auntie!" she said, squatting on the hearthrug after tea, with one of the dear hands squeezed in hers, while she poured out her accumulation of troubles. "I've got to keep that promise, but I can't do it with any good grace, and I still feel that Miss Tempest was unjust, because nobody had ever said we mightn't leave the Coll. in dinner-time. And I'm barred the gym. It's too disgusting, because it puts me out of all rehearsals, and I shall have to give up my part in the act." "Poor old sweetheart, you've certainly been in the wars to-day! But honestly, don't you think it is just the least little scrap your own fault? I fancy at the bottom you knew that dinner girls aren't expected to run out into the town whenever they like, even to look at weddings--and it wasn't justifiable to speak rudely to Miss Tempest, was it?" Dorothy stared hard at the fire. "No; I suppose I was cheeky. Auntie, when I'm at school and things are horrid, I just flare up and explode--I can't help it. I'm quite different at home. I wish I had lessons with you again, like I did when I was a little girl. I'd be far nicer." "A soldier isn't good for very much until he's tried, is he? School is your battlefield at present, and the temper is the enemy. Won't you be a Red Cross Knight, and ride out to do full and fair fight with it? It's as ugly a dragon as ever attacked St. George." "And a great deal harder to conquer, because every time I kill it, it comes to life again, ready for another go at me. There, Auntie! yes, I'll make a try; but I know I shall do lots more hateful things--I always do!" CHAPTER VII Alison's Home