She jumped up from her pillow and looked out after the westering sun, her eyes dark and dilated, her red lips parted. “What do I want?” she slowly repeated, “I want—oh, you would not understand what I want, but worrying won’t get it.” She caught up her book again and threw herself face downwards on the sward. “That’s the way! You’ll never tell me anything,” said Dacre angrily. “I’ll tell you one thing, and that’s I’ll help you to go to school, and you’ll go if you aren’t a common ass, and if you’ll do all I tell you.” “Golly! I’ll do anything in the world for you if you’ll only get me out of this hole,” he blurted out in a spluttering fit of gratitude. “Perhaps, even, I might help you to get what you want, if you didn’t make such a deadly secret of it,” he added looking at her as if he might somehow extract it from her unawares. But her lips were tightly shut and her eyes looked dead and cold. “One might as well expect to get blood from a turnip,” muttered Dacre in the choice vernacular of the groom’s boy. “Oh Lord! that brutal bell, lessons again! But you like ’em,” he said raising himself slowly and turning on her vindictively. “There’s nothing else to like; pick up your book and come. I hate to look at Gregg’s eyes when we are late, I think he had cats for his ancestors, and not very long ago either, when he talks quick he always spits. Oh, that vile bell, we may as well run, he can’t see us from the school-room window or I wouldn’t give him that much satisfaction.” “When will you begin the help,” panted Dacre, as they pulled up at the nearest point out of sight of the school-room. “I’ll think to-night and tell you—Ugh! Dacre, wipe your face you get so perspirationy after the shortest run; I never do.” “No thanks to you, when one can see through you for thinness.” The next evening when lessons were put away, and the school-room tea over, Gwen, instead of absorbing herself in a book until bedtime, as she generally did, took a restless fit. She moved about in a noiseless sweeping way she had; she threw the window open breathlessly, and craned her head far into the breezy night. A sudden gust that was carrying on a wild dance with some maple leaves, caught sight of her hair and seized on it as a new plaything, or perhaps mistook it for some of the orange-gold leaves, and swept great lengths of it out among them till her white face seemed caught in a whirling net of brilliant gold. When she drew back at last panting, she shut the window and went over to Dacre. “You’re pretty tidy,” she said, “for you, but you might just take that black smudge off your nose. Do I look right?” “You look as mad as a hatter, but you generally do that, only I think your hair makes you look madder than ever.” She caught her hair bodily, gave it a violent shake, then took out her handkerchief and rubbed her cheeks until they glowed scarlet. “What are you at, making yourself like a turkey-cock?” demanded Dacre.