When Lois left, Julia put herself through a little cross-examination; for a month or two she had not been wholly satisfied with her year's work. Had she used her time and her money in the best way? Was there not some other work that she might have carried on to greater advantage? Was it altogether wise to have given up so entirely her own personal interests? Ah! Clarissa was right; she was not justified in putting entirely aside her music--especially her work in composition. What, indeed, had she to show for the year? So her thoughts ran. Ten girls better trained in useful things than would have been the case without the Mansion teaching; but this year must be followed up by another year of teaching, and then in the end could she be sure that they would retain what they had learned? Concetta and Haleema had improved superficially, but she was by no means confident that they were really neater or really more truthful than in the beginning. Maggie--and here she smiled--broke fewer dishes, but her reticence was far from commendable. Frankness was a virtue that she herself constantly preached, yet she had been able to instil very little of this quality into Maggie's breast. In spite of all her precepts, too, Inez was still as willing as at the beginning of the year to put on her stockings with the feet unmended, and--"Difficulties are things that show what men are." Like a ray of sunlight this thought from Epictetus flashed across Julia's mind. After all, how few real difficulties she had had to meet during the year; and had not the successes been more than the failures? Mary Murphy had been the only one of the girls to insist on leaving the school, although she had occasionally heard the others expressing their dissatisfaction, especially when some of them had undergone some of the discipline that they had to undergo. One of the first lessons to learn had been that of the general deceitfulness of girls, and of these girls in particular, who did not hesitate to make many little criticisms as unjustifiable as they were foolish. After all, the balance sheet did not show a total against the experiment, even when all the things were counted that had to be called not quite successful. "It is the warm weather," thought Julia, "that depresses me. Instead of dreading next year, when autumn comes I shall probably wish that I had twice as much to do."