"No, but she's lived all her life in the city, and feels above everybody. She and her brother and her mother will just take possession of our piazza and door-yard, and our swing; and I can wash dishes, and sit on the back door-step, and never see a girl from one month's end to another." Here Lucindy burst out crying. "It's too bad," said Carrie. The little Lena, ever fertile in invention, crept near, and putting her arms around Lucindy's neck, whispered: "We'll come to see you on the sly, and we can go down in the fields and have fun, when your Auntie goes out for an afternoon." "I wish you would," said Lucindy. "And I'll bring down some cake and pickles, and some honey, and we'll have a pic-nic in spite of Mrs. Randolph!" This was a solution of the unhappy problem, and it seemed to throw a ray of sunlight slantwise into the gloomy picture of the coming summer. The progress of the afternoon at the school-house was not marked by any unusual occurrence, and at the close, the little company of schoolmates proceeded together, until they came to the road leading to Lucindy's home. Here they parted, with many professions of everlasting friendship; Lucindy, walking backwards, watched her companions until the turn in the road hid them from view. Then she sat down upon a bank by the roadside under an old tree. Throwing her slate and books down on the grass, she snatched a few daisies that grew near, and thought of many things of a disquieting nature, pulling the flowers to pieces. "I feel mad enough to run away!" she thought. "I could earn my living easy enough in the city, and not have to work so hard either. Miss Hunter can't teach me any thing more. I've learned all she knows. It's just too bad not to be able to get more education. I'll just take my own way, if Auntie crowds me too much. I don't care if she don't like it. If my father and mother were alive, she wouldn't be my boss. I can get on in another place with what I know about a good many things. "But oh, that girl that's coming has so much better times than I. Those lovely city schools! no one can help learning there, they take such pains with you." She looked down the road upon which the slanting red light of the declining sun was shining, and there she saw a cloud of dust. This road was not a great thoroughfare, and she knew that was the stage, and it probably would bring the undesired summer guests. She shrank visibly back into the shadow of the tree as it came on, and smoothed out her faded calico dress and pulled her sun-bonnet farther over her face. The coach came rolling past, and a girl in the back seat directed the attention of a fashionably-dressed lady to herself, she thought, and laughed as though immensely pleased, at the same time pointing at her. A little boy, who sat in the front seat with the driver, and who was playing upon a harmonica, stopped, and looking in her direction, laughed too.