“If you stay here long, Madeline, you will certainly become just as preaching and particular as one of the Harpies themselves. You are tremendously sobered as it is. Who would think, to look at you darning away so industriously, that this time last year you were the queen and moving spirit of the school; always getting up charades, dances, and concerts, and carrying your point on every question, and figuratively snapping your fingers at the Harpies if they interfered with your schemes--which, to do them justice, was very seldom! Ah! my poor Maddie, since then what a change has come o’er the spirit of your dream! It is terrible. If you had always been a pupil-teacher it would be another matter, or if you had gone to another school, where no one knew that you had fallen from your high estate; but here, the scene of your triumphs, to make the descent to the very foot of the ladder, is--is frightful. I often wonder how you can bear it so well.” “I often wonder too,” said Madeline shortly, winking her tears back with a great effort. “You are not going the best way to work to help me to endure my lot, Flo, raking up all these things. Bad or good, I must submit. I have no alternative--nowhere to go, until my father comes home. The best thing I can do is to be patient, and try and repay the Harpers for some of the money they have expended on me.” “Repay them!” echoed Miss Blewitt, scornfully. “They made a very good thing out of you for nine years--large profits and quick returns. Now, although your father has not sent his usual remittance--is not that the word?--and they have heard that he is in business difficulties, yet I think they might have given you a little more law--a longer day. They might have exercised some patience. You have not heard of your father for more than a year, have you?” she added bluntly. “No, not for sixteen months,” answered the pupil-teacher. “But even if he were dead,” proceeded Flo, with a fine disregard of her friend’s feelings, and an open defiance of the laws of good breeding, such as is occasionally to be found in girls of her age, “you could not honestly pretend to be very much cut up! You have not seen him since you were a small child. You left Australia when you were seven years old. He is a stranger to you.” “A stranger, certainly, in one way; but still he is my father, and I have a presentiment that we shall meet again, and before long,” rolling up a pair of stockings as she spoke, and averting her eyes from her outspoken schoolfellow. “Pooh! I don’t believe in presentiments. _I_ had a presentiment that father was going to give me a cart and cob last holidays, and it ended in smoke. If your father had been in the land of the living, surely you would have heard. I know I am saying this very baldly and plainly, but there is no use in beating about the bush--is there? You must face the position sooner or later.”