She made her lead pencil as pointed as possible with a knife newly sharpened by Jonathan, and wrote at the end of her slip of paper, which had come out much crumpled from her pocket: "Look over my clothes and every one of my stockings, and put them in as good order as possible." Then she smoothed out another larger piece of paper on her knee and read it. One day she had copied some scattered sentences from a book, and prefaced them with some things that her father often had said: "Learn the right way to do things. Do everything that you can for yourself. Try to make yourself fit to live with other people. Try to avoid making other people wait upon you. Remember that every person stands in a different place from every other and so sees life from a different point of view. Remember that nobody likes to be proved in the wrong, and be careful in what manner you say things to people that they do not wish to hear." Betty read slowly with great approval at first, but the end seemed disturbing. "That's just what Aunt Mary likes!" she reflected, with suddenly rising wrath. "She says things over twice, for fear I don't hear them the first time. I wish she would let me alone!" but Betty's conscience smote her at this point. She really was beginning to wish most heartily that she were good, and like every one else wished for the approval of others as well as for the peace of her own conscience. This was a black-mark day when she had neither, and she thought about her life more intently than usual. When she liked herself everybody liked her, but when she was on bad terms with herself everybody else seemed ready to join in the stern disapproval. Papa was always ready to lend a helping hand at such times, but papa was far away. Nothing was so pleasant as usual that morning, and a fog of discouragement seemed to shut out all the sunshine in Betty Leicester's heart. She did not often get low-spirited, but for that hour all the excitement of coming to Tideshead and being liked and befriended by her old friends had vanished and left only a miserable hopelessness in its place. The road of life appeared to lead nowhere, and perhaps our friend missed the constant change and excitement of interest brought to her by living alongside such a busy, inspiriting life as her father's. Here in Tideshead she had to provide her own motive power instead of being tributary to a stronger current.