But when Molly was about the age of fifteen she began to display more troublesome qualities, and a certain faculty for doing quite the wrong thing under a perverse appearance of attempting good works. There is nothing annoys a woman of Mrs. Carteret's stamp so much as good done in the wrong way. She had known for so many years exactly how to do good to the labourer, his family, and his widow, or to the vagrant passing by. It was really very tiresome to find that Molly, while walking in one of the lanes, had slipped off a new flannel petticoat in order to wrap up a gypsy's baby. And it might be allowed to be trying that when believing an old man of rather doubtful antecedents to be dying from exhaustion, Molly had herself sought whisky from the nearest inn. She had bought a whole bottle of whisky, though indeed, being seized with qualms, she had poured half the contents of the bottle into a ditch before going back to the cottage. And it was undoubtedly Mrs. Carteret's duty to protest when she found that Molly had held a baby with diphtheria folded closely in her arms while the mother fetched the doctor. Can any one blame Mrs. Carteret for finding these doings a little trying? And it showed how freakish and contradictory Molly was in all her ways that she would never join nicely in school feasts, or harvest homes, or anything pleasant or cheerful. Nor did she make friends even with those she had worried over in times of sickness. She would risk some serious infection, or meddle, with her odd notions, day after day in a cottage; and then she would hardly nod to the convalescent boy or girl when she met them again in the lanes. There was no one to tell her aunt what new, strange instincts and aspirations were struggling to the light in Molly. A passionate pity for pain would seize on her and hold her in a grip until she had done some definite act to relieve it. But pity was either not akin to love in Molly, or her affections had been too starved to take root after the immediate impulse of mercy was passed. The girl was not popular in the village, although, unlike Mrs. Carteret, her poorer neighbours had a great idea of Molly's cleverness. Needless to say that when, after some unmeasured effort at relieving suffering, Molly would come home with a sense of joy she rarely knew after any other act, it hurt her to the quick and roused her deepest anger to find herself treated like a naughty, inconsiderate child. The storms between Mrs. Carteret and Molly were increasing in number and intensity, with outspoken wrath on one side, and a white heat of dumb, indignant resistance on the other. Then, happily, there came a change. Molly's education had been of the very slightest until she was nearly sixteen, when Mrs. Carteret told her to expect the arrival of a finishing governess. She also announced that a music master from the cathedral town would, in future, come over twice a week to give her lessons.