“Betty dear,” she said, “you don’t see these things quite rightly. Your grandmother thinks those children act correctly, and that you don’t. But, you see, city life is quite different from that of a small village. How would you like to move to live in a big city, Betty?” “And give up Denniston? My beautiful home! Oh, Mother, I don’t want to do that!” “No, and I don’t want you to. Well, we’ll see what can be done.” The “seeing” resulted in long talks by the elders of the family, and these talks resulted in a decision to send Betty at once to a boarding-school at Hillside Manor, a fine country place about a hundred miles away. As the winter term was just beginning, she was to go directly, without returning to Greenborough. The school was most highly recommended, and Mrs. McGuire was persuaded that it would give Betty the “finish” she needed. But the plan did not please Betty at all. She did not rebel,—that was not her way,—but she expressed her feelings in the matter so clearly that there was no doubt as to her state of mind. “I don’t want to go, Mother,” she said; “I hate to be with a lot of girls—I want my own family and my _home_. Oh, Mother, must I leave my home when I love it so?” “Yes, Betty darling,” said her mother, though strongly tempted to say “No”; “I see it is for your good to send you away, and I’m sure you ought to go. But I shall miss you dreadfully, and just count the days till your return.” “It’s hard lines, Betty,” said Jack; “but as long as they all think you ought to go, I should think you’d be glad to go and learn the right sort of thing, whatever it is. Old Tutor Nixon is wise and all that, but he can’t fill the bill in other ways. At least that’s what Grandma Irving thinks, and so do I, too.” In fact, there was no one who agreed with Betty’s ideas except her grandfather. “All bosh,” he said. “My granddaughter is a natural, unaffected, unspoiled girl. You send her off to Madam Tippetywitch, or whoever she is, and she’ll come back an artificial young miss, with no thought but for fashions and foolishness.” But the old gentleman was entirely overruled by the determination of his wife, and Betty was sent away. None of the family accompanied Betty to the school, as Mrs. Irving felt sure the child would be less homesick if she started off with a gay party of girls who were going back to their classes. And so good-bys were said at the station in Boston, and Betty made the trip to Hillside in company with half a dozen school-girls, in charge of one of the teachers. It was a strange position in which Betty found herself. An heiress in her own right, she yet felt a sense of inferiority which she herself could not explain.