But, following the principal's orders, she endeavoured to demonstrate to Bonita the joy and blessedness of life in New York. The child went quietly wherever she was taken--a mute, pathetic little figure to whom the aquarium fish and the Old Masters and the latest matinée idol were all one--and unimportant. The other girls envied her her privileges and her pocket-money, but they did not understand. No one understood save Belinda, and she did her cheerful best to blot out old loves with new impressions; but from the first she felt in her heart that she was elected to failure. The child was fond of her, always respectful, always docile, always grave. Nothing brought a light into her eyes or a spontaneous smile to her lips. Anyone save Belinda would have grown impatient, angry. _She_ only grew more tender--and more troubled. Day by day she watched the sad little face grow thinner. It was pale now, instead of brown, and the high cheekbones were strikingly prominent. The lips pressed closely together drooped plaintively at the corners, and the big eyes were more full of shadow than ever; but the child made no protest nor plea, and by tacit consent she and Belinda ignored their first conversation and never mentioned Texas. Often Belinda made up her mind to put aside the restraint and talk freely as she would to any other girl, but there was something about the little Texan that forbade liberties, warned off intruders, and the Youngest Teacher feared losing what little ground she had gained. Finally she went in despair to Miss Ryder. "The Indian character is too much for me," she confessed with a groan half humorous, half earnest. "I give it up." "What's the matter?" asked Miss Ryder. "Well, I've dragged poor Bonita Allen all over the borough of Manhattan and the Bronx and spent many ducats in the process. She has been very polite about it, but just as sad over Sherry's tea hour as over Grant's tomb, and just as cheerful over the Cesnola collection as over the monkey cage at the Zoo. The poor little thing is so unhappy and miserable that she looks like a wild animal in a trap, and I think the best thing we can do with her is to send her home." "Nonsense," said Miss Lucilla. "Her father is paying eighteen hundred dollars a year." Belinda was defiant. "I don't care. He ought to take her home." "Miss Carewe, you are sentimentalising. One would think you had never seen a homesick girl before." "She's different from other girls." "I'll talk with her myself," said Miss Lucilla sternly. She did, but the situation remained unchanged, and when she next mentioned the Texan problem to Belinda, Miss Lucilla was less positive in her views. "She's a very strange child, but we must do what we can to carry out her father's wishes." "_I'd_ send her home," said Belinda.