Mr. John Short answered her shrewdly: "There is no reason why you should not be both, Miss Fairfax. A woman of sense considers the fitness of things. And at Abbotsmead none but gentlewomen are at home." Bessie colored and was silent. "We have been proposing that you should go to school for a year or two, dear," said Mrs. Carnegie persuasively. Tears came into Bessie's eyes. The lawyer's letter had indeed mentioned school, but she had not anticipated that the cruel suggestion would be carried out. "Shall it be an English school or a school in France?" said Mr. Short, taking the indulgent cue, to avoid offence and stave off resistance. But his affectation of meekness was more provoking than his sarcasm. Bessie fired up indignantly at such unworthy treatment. "You are deciding and settling everything without a word to my father. How do you know that he will let me go away? I don't want to go," she said. "That _is_ settled, Bessie darling. _You have to go_--so don't get angry about it," said Mrs. Carnegie with firmness. "You may have your choice about a school at home or abroad, and that is all. Now be good, and consider which you would like best." Bessie's tears overflowed. "I hate girls!" she said with an asperity that quite shamed her mother, "they are so silly." Mr. John Short with difficulty forbore a smile. "And they don't like me!" she added with gusty wrath. "I never get on with girls, never! I don't know what to say to them. And when they find out that I can't speak French or play on the piano, they will laugh at me." Her own countenance broke into a laugh as she uttered the prediction, but she laughed with tears still in her eyes. The lawyer nodded his head in a satisfied way. "It will all come right in time," said he. "If you can make fun of the prospect of school, the reality will not be very terrible to a young lady of your courageous temper." Poor Bessie was grave again in an instant. She felt that she had let her fate slip out of her hands. She could not now declare her refusal to go to school at all; she could only choose what kind of school she would go to. "If it must be one or another, let it be French," she said, and rushed from the room in a tempestuous mood. Mrs. Carnegie excused her as very affectionate, and as tired and overdone. She looked tired and overdone herself, and out of spirits as well. Mr. John Short said a few sympathetic words, and volunteered a few reasonable pledges for the future, and then took his leave--the kindest thing he could do, since thus he set the mother at liberty to go and comfort her child. Her idea of comforting and Bessie's idea of being comforted consisted, for the nonce, in having a good cry together. * * * * *