It need hardly be said that Maud Matchin did not find the high school all her heart desired. Her pale goddess had not enough substantial character to hold her worshipper long. Besides, at fifteen, a young girl's heart is as variable as her mind or her person; and a great change was coming over the carpenter's daughter. She suddenly gained her full growth; and after the first awkwardness of her tall stature passed away, she began to delight in her own strength and beauty. Her pride waked at the same time with her vanity, and she applied herself closely to her books, so as to make a good appearance in her classes. She became the friend instead of the vassal of Azalea, and by slow degrees she found their positions reversed. Within a year, it seemed perfectly natural to Maud that Azalea should do her errands and talk to her about her eyes; and Miss Windom found her little airs of superiority of no avail in face of the girl who had grown prettier, cleverer, and taller than herself. It made no difference that Maud was still a vulgar and ignorant girl--for Azalea was not the person to perceive or appreciate these defects. She saw her, with mute wonder, blooming out before her very eyes, from a stout, stocky, frowzy child, with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a bootblack, into a tall, slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a conic section, and whose movements were as swift, strong, and graceful, when she forgot herself, as those of a race-horse. There were still the ties of habit and romance between them. Azalea, whose brother was a train-boy on the Lake Shore road, had a constant supply of light literature, which the girls devoured in the long intervals of their studies. But even the romance of Miss Matchin had undergone a change. While Azalea still dreamed of dark-eyed princes, lords of tropical islands, and fierce and tender warriors who should shoot for her the mountain eagle for his plumes, listen with her to the bulbul's song in valleys of roses, or hew out a throne for her in some vague and ungeographical empire, the reveries of Miss Maud grew more and more mundane and reasonable. She was too strong and well to dream much; her only visions were of a rich man who should love her for her fine eyes. She would meet him in some simple and casual way; he would fall in love at sight, and speedily prosper in his wooing; they would be married,--privately, for Maud blushed and burned to think of her home at such times,--and then they would go to New York to live. She never wasted conjecture on the age, the looks, the manner of being of this possible hero. Her mind intoxicated itself with the thought of his wealth. She went one day to the Public Library to read the articles on Rothschild and Astor in the encyclopedias. She even tried to read the editorial articles on gold and silver in the Ohio papers.