"It is just like her," said the angry Mabel. "She knew I could not possibly win the prize, and so she set me this test. Now, when I have to write to her meekly and say, `Dear, kind Auntie,--Your Mabel came out worst of all the girls who tried for the literature prize,' she will write again and say, `Who was right, Mabel, you or I?' Oh, I would give all the world to prove her wrong!" "I quite understand," said Annie; "I'd feel precisely the same if it were Uncle Horace; but then, with all his faults, Uncle Horace would not set me an impossible task. How queer, how queer is the world; you pine to leave school, and Priscilla Weir would give her eyes to stay! Yet poor Priscilla, who is almost a genius, has to go, and you, who are not a bit of a genius, and will never appreciate the learning that is given at the school, will have to stay." "Yes; things are most horribly contrary," said Mabel. "Unless I can set them right," thought Annie to herself. There was an expression on her face which Mabel could not fathom when she suddenly ran up to her, kissed her, and said, "Leave it to me." CHAPTER TWO. THE TEMPTATION. Priscilla, when she left the girls' special sitting-room, went out into the grounds. She saw a group of her young companions standing on the lawn. She was, on the whole, a favourite in the school, particularly with the younger girls, for she was gentle and good-natured, often helping them with their studies and sympathising with their small sorrows. But now she avoided her companions, and going to a shrubbery at one side of the grounds, paced up and down a shady walk. Priscilla was very ambitious, and the letter she had received was the end of everything. She was an only child. Her father was in India, her mother dead. She was left under the care of an uncle, her mother's brother, a rough, fairly good-natured, but utterly unsympathetic person. Priscilla's father was a clerk, with only a very small salary, in one of the Government Houses at Madras. He could do little more than support himself, and Priscilla was therefore left to the care of Uncle Josiah. It was he who paid for her schooling, who received her during the holidays, who gave her what clothes she possessed--in short, who supplied what he considered her every want. Occasionally she heard from her father; but by this time he had married again, had one or two little children, and found it more than ever impossible to do anything for Priscilla. When he wrote he urged her to make the most of her education, for when she was really properly educated she could support herself as a governess, or a coach, or a mistress at one of the high schools. Priscilla was full of ambition, and the letter which she had just received seemed at that moment like her death-blow. "What am I to do?" she thought. "When I am with Uncle Josiah, he and Aunt Susan will make me nothing whatever but a household drudge. Does not his letter--his horrid letter--say so?"