“I am doing-- I don’t know what I am doing,” said Katie, “dancing attendance on Mrs. Stone and old Southernwood. They are going to get me a situation in some _nice_ family. I wish the nice family would turn up, for I am very tired waiting and wasting my holidays in this old place. It is nice being here? Oh, I know what you will say it is very nice, and I am very ungrateful; but though it is nice it is a school, Lucy and mamma does not want me at home, and I have got no other place to go. Lady Langton has been very kind; she asked me to go there for three days. But it’s dreary always coming back to school, for the White House is only school when all is said. They are all right at Hampstead, so far as I know. Did you hear what happened? Mamma has come into some money. It is not a very great sum, but it is a great help. It was some old relations, that no one had ever thought of, and mamma says it might just as well have been the double, for they were _dreadfully_ rich. But anyhow it has been a great help. With what she had before, I believe they have quite enough to live on now, without doing anything,” Katie said with a little pride. To all this Lucy listened with a countenance void of all expression. She had been half afraid of her friend’s gratitude: but there was something in this complete ignorance which was very bewildering. And when she looked at her own generosity through Katie’s eyes, so to speak, and saw it _on the other side_, she felt, too, that “it might as well have been the double,” and contemplated her own action with a mixture of shame and regret, instead of the satisfaction which she had vainly felt at first. And this little discovery made her first wound smart all the more. A certain fear crept over her. She would have liked to stop her ears from further revelations had she been able. But as that was impossible, Lucy listened patiently, with a blank countenance, trying hard to dismiss all appearance of feeling from her face. “Mamma would like me to stay at home too,” Katie continued “She can not bear me to be a governess. But I could not do it; stay at home and sink down into Hampstead tea-parties--oh, I could not do it! If I get into a good family, Maud and the others will stand by me, and I shall have some fun at least and see life. To have only enough to live on, and to live at Hampstead, is more than I _could_ put up with. Bertie, he has gone into chambers; he doesn’t live with mamma now. I don’t blame him, do you, Lucy? It must have been so slow for him, a young man. And now he has some money of his own, of course he has himself to think of. He is _always_”-- Katie said slowly, watching her friend’s face--“always talking of you.” Lucy did not make any response; but she was surprised by this unexpected change in the strain, and looked up involuntarily, with a half inquiry in her eyes.