The Major smiled and stroked his moustache. He was used to Pixie's outbursts, and quite unperturbed thereby, although a stranger would have quailed at the sound, and would certainly have imagined that some horrible form of torture was being employed. Pixie checked herself sufficiently to peep at his face, realised that violence was useless, and promptly changed her tactics. She whimpered dismally, and essayed cajolery. "It will break me heart to leave you. Father darlin', let me stay! What will you do without your little girl at all?" "I'll miss you badly, but it's for your own good. That brogue of yours is getting worse and worse. And such a fine school, too! Think of all you will be able to learn!" "Me education's finished," said Pixie haughtily. "I know me tables and can read me books, and write a letter when I want, and that's all that's required of a young gentlewoman living at home with her parents. I've heard you say so meself--a hundred times, if once." It was too true. The Major recognised the argument with which he had been wont to answer his wife's pleas for higher education, and was incensed, as we all are when our own words are brought up against us. "You are a very silly child," he said severely, "and don't understand what you are talking about. I am giving you an opportunity which none of your brothers and sisters have had, and you have not the decency to say as much as `Thank you.' I am ashamed of you. I am bitterly ashamed!" Such a statement would have been blighting indeed to an ordinary child, but Pixie looked relieved rather than otherwise, for her quick wits had recognised another form of appeal, and she was instantly transformed into an image of penitence and humiliation. "I am a bad, ungrateful choild, and don't deserve your kindness. I ought to be punished, and kept at home, and then when I grew older and had more sense I'd regret it, and it would be a warning to me. Esmeralda's cleverer than me. It would serve me right if she went instead." It was of no avail. The Major only laughed and repeated his decision, when Pixie realised that it was useless fighting against fate, and resigned herself to the inevitable with characteristic philosophy. Her outbursts of rebellion, though violent for the time being, were of remarkably short duration, for she was of too sunny a nature to remain long depressed, and moreover it was more congenial to her pride to pose as an object of envy than pity. On the present occasion she no sooner realised that go to school she must, than she began to plume herself on her importance, and prepare to queen it over her sisters.