Mother rode over to Barmouth occasionally, but seemed more glad when she went away than when she came. Veronica came with her once, but said she would come no more while I was there. She too would wait till the end of the year, for I spoiled the place. She said this so calmly that I never thought of being offended by it. I told her the episode of the pink calico. "It is a lovely color," she said, when I showed it to her. "If you like, I will take it home and burn it." As I developed the dramatic part of my story--the blow given Charlotte Alden, Verry rubbed her face shrinkingly, as if she had felt the blow. "Let me see your hand," she asked; "did I ever strike anybody?" "You threw a pail of salt downstairs, once, upon my head, and put out my sight." "I wish, when you are home, you would pound Mr. Park; he talks too much about the Resurrection. And," she added mysteriously, "he likes mother." "Likes mother!" I said aghast. "He watches her so when she holds Arthur! Why do you stare at me? Why do I talk to you? I am going. Now mind, I shall never leave home to go to any school; I shall know enough without." While Veronica was holding this placable talk with me, I discovered in her the high-bred air, the absence of which I deplored in myself. How cool and unimpressionable she looked! She did not attract me then. My mind wandered to what I had heard Mary Bennett say, in recess one day, that her brother had seen me in church, and came home with the opinion that I was the handsomest girl in Miss Black's school. "Is it possible!" replied the girl to whom she had made the remark. "I never should think of calling her pretty." "Stop, Veronica," I called; "am I pretty?" She turned back. "Everybody in Surrey says so; and everybody says I am not." And she banged the door against me. She did not come to Barmouth again. She was ill in the winter, and, father told me, queerer than ever, and more trouble. The summer passed, and I had no particular torment, except Miss Black's reference to composition. I could not do justice to the themes she gave us, not having the books from which she took them at command, and betrayed an ignorance which excited her utmost contempt, on "The Scenery of Singapore," "The Habits of the Hottentots," and "The Relative Merits of Homer and Virgil."