Chip, almost a mature young lady, was aligned with girls and boys of ten and twelve, and once more the same shame and humiliation had to be endured. It wore away in time, however, for she had made almost marvellous progress under Miss Phinney. Her mind was keen and quick, and once at study again, she astonished Mr. Bell, the master. Something of her old fearless self-reliance now came to her aid, also. It had made her dare sixty miles of wilderness alone and helpless, it had spurred her to escape Greenvale and her sense of being a dependent pauper, and now that latent force for good or ill still nerved her. But Christmas Cove did not suit her. The sea that drew her eyes with its vastness seemed to awe her. The great house, brown and moss-coated, where she lived, was barnlike, and never quite warm enough. The long street she traversed four times daily was bleak and wind-swept. Aunt Abby was austere and lacking in cordiality; and Sundays--well, Sundays were Chip's one chief abhorrence. She may be blamed for it,--doubtless will be,--and yet she never had been, and it seemed never would be, quite reconciled to Sundays. At Tim's Place they were unknown. At Greenvale they had been dreaded, and now at Christmas Cove they were no less so. At Uncle Jud's, in Peaceful Valley, where she had found an asylum, loving care, and companionship akin to her, Sundays were only half-Sundays--days of chore-doing, of reading, of rest, or long strolls along shady lanes with Uncle Jud, or following the brook and watching him fish. It was not right, maybe. It was somewhat of sacrilege, perhaps, this lazy, summer-day-strolling, flower-picking, berry-gathering way of passing them, and yet, as the months with Martin and his party in the wilderness where Sunday could not be observed, and those with Uncle Jud were all that Chip had really enjoyed, she must not be blamed. Another influence--an insidious heart-hunger she could not put away--now added to her loneliness in the new life. It carried her thoughts back to the rippled, moonlit lake, where Ray had picked his banjo and sung to her; even back to that first night by the camp-fire when she had watched and listened to him in rapt admiration. It thrilled her as naught else could when she recalled the few moments at the lake when, unconscious of the need of restraint, she had let him caress her. Then the long days of watching for his return were lived over, and the one almost ecstatic moment when he had leaped from the stage and over the wall, with no one in sight, while he held her in his arms. And then--and this hurt the most--that last evening before they were to part again, when beside the firefly-lit mill-pond he had the chance to say so much, and said--nothing!