“Yes. You’ve often wondered where I sent so much of my salary, and now you know. I’ve a daughter who’s nearly sixteen years old.” “The dickens you say! It can’t be true.” “Oh, yes, and what’s more, it is. She’s at school, and I haven’t seen her--no, and haven’t wanted to, either--since she was old enough to walk alone. I’m going to see her now, however, and Mrs. Bonair is going to see her, too--see her and hear of her for the first time. Shut me out, will she? Show her claws like that, eh, after I’ve let her alone for all these years? Well, if ever--get out of the way, for goodness’ sake! That’s the curtain bell, and that little beast of a call boy never notified me that it was time to begin.” And then, without another word, she turned and ran up the stairs to the stage as fast as her little satin-shod feet could go. CHAPTER XLIII. AT SCHOOL. “Fifteen, love,” said Dora mechanically, as she jotted down the score. “No, I beg pardon, it isn’t; it’s fifteen all.” “Nothing of the sort,” snapped her pet aversion, Gwen Morley, turning on her with a flash of angry resentment. “You’re not paying attention. It’s thirty, fifteen; that last ball was a fault, if it’s all the same to you, Miss Vance, and our side had scored a point before that. It’s thirty, fifteen, if you please.” “Oh, very well,” said Dora--she made a point of never bandying words with Gwen Morley. “If it is thirty, fifteen, I’ll set it down that way. No doubt I made a mistake; my head aches. Go on with the game, please, and I will try to keep the score properly--if I can.” “If you can? Well, I like that! What are you here for? I don’t suppose Miss Skimmers sent you out here to twiddle your thumbs and look at the sky, although that’s about all you have done since we started playing. If you can’t keep the score correctly, say so, and we’ll get some other gifted and condescending pupil teacher to do it for you.” Dora swallowed the affront with no more outward show of her feelings than a slight heightening of her color, and presently the white balls were skimming over the tennis net and flying through the hot, still air again. But if she said nothing, she thought a great deal, and the term “pupil teacher” rankled, though why it should have done so--unless it was because of the sneering tone in which it had been spoken--she could not tell. For a pupil teacher she undoubtedly was, and had been for this many a long day. “It is your mother’s desire that, as she cannot afford to give you the full advantages enjoyed by more fortunate pupils, you should do something yourself to assist in paying for your education,” explained Miss Skimmers, with something of a sneer, when Dora was old enough and advanced enough to enter upon this stage of her existence. “You will divide your time in future between receiving lessons and in imparting them. You are quite advanced enough now to teach the little children of the third form, and I will write and tell your mother so.”