We had a battle royal concerning the school she should go to, and to this day Cousin Jane thinks she won. She really has no more idea about schools than a chinquapin worm, living fat and contented in its own sufficient little world; and I knew she’d be for sending the child to some fifth-rate country “college” where she’d be taught poor music and worse French, and be worked to death learning things the way they aren’t. So I wrote, ostentatiously, for the catalogue of one of the most exclusive, nonsensical, and extravagant “finishing schools”; and privately ordered sent to Cousin Jane one from the school I wished Caro to attend. It was a sensible place where she’d be taken care of, and given a chance to grow up to the best of herself in body and mind. I plead for the finishing school, and sniffed diligently at the other, even advocating the dreaded “college” as preferable; whereby I had the comfort of having Caro sent where I wanted her, with Cousin Jane’s mind so definitely set on keeping her there that I knew her education was provided for. Caro rebelled against going. For the first time in her life she did not want to please us. “You’re not well enough to do without me and David, too, Mammy Lil,” she insisted; “it’s just a pretense that you don’t need me; and I don’t care whether I’m educated or not.” She yielded to the inevitable between tears and laughter. “Anyway,” she reflected, “there’s Make-Believe left: you’ll never get rid of me there, will you? I’ll come there every day of the world, and David, too: and ten times a day if you want me.” It was a genuine relief to have her go; it was becoming most difficult to blind her bright eyes to my illness. It was much simpler to keep up appearances with the Peon, who left home early and returned late, and who was often called away for days together. If I sat up as usual when he was in the house it was becoming necessary to lie quite still all day. For weeks after the children left I enjoyed being alone, and the freedom from effort which it brought. But as the winter wore on, the loneliness proved a lure to introspection and self-pity—those quicksands of despair which encircle the country of enforced idleness; and as I lay under my windows or beneath the trees I began, for pleasure and companionship, to write the story of our happy life and of the children’s growing up. But the note-book proved desperately heavy, and the few pages I filled took weeks instead of days; until at last I ceased the effort until I should be stronger, as I had ceased so many other things in this journeying into the Land of Idleness.