Three Girls from School

How flushed Annie was! When she got into the open air she panted slightly. She looked up the street and down the street. She had had an awful time with Mrs Priestley, and she had quite forgotten the dress which was to be made for Mabel. She could not remedy that omission now, however; for nothing would induce her to see the terrible Mrs Priestley again. Her companions were not yet in sight, and she paced up and down thinking her own thoughts.

After a time she felt calmer. The money was safe in her pocket. There would be no fuss for three months at least. Annie was a sort of girl who could not think of trouble three months ahead. In half-an-hour she felt quite happy. The memory of her depression vanished, and when the girls on their bicycles hove in sight she met them with a gay word.

“You have had a ride!” she said. “I have been out of Mrs Priestley’s for ages.”

“I thought,” said Agnes Moore, one of the girls, “that you would never be tired of an interview with a dressmaker, Annie. Is she quite as imposing as people describe her? I go to Mrs Arnold, you know.”

“She is withering,” said Annie, with a laugh. “She invariably speaks of herself as ‘we,’ and is a perfect mass of pomposity. I do wish, Agnes, you could have heard the withering tone in which she alluded to ‘Mrs Arnold’s ladies.’ Oh dear, oh dear! I nearly died with laughter.” During the rest of the ride home Annie amused herself in taking off Mrs Priestley, which she did to the life. That very same evening thirty pounds in gold and notes had been transferred, first from Annie’s pocket to that of Mabel Lushington, and then from Mabel Lushington to Priscilla Weir.

Priscilla turned very white when her hand touched the little packet.

“It hurts me,” she said aloud. Mabel and Annie were both present when she made this remark, but neither of them asked her to explain herself. On the contrary, Mabel took Annie’s arm and hurried her away.

“How did you manage with Mrs Priestley?” she asked.

“It is all right, love,” said Annie. “She has added thirty pounds to your account.”

But Mabel looked not at all satisfied. “I didn’t want it to be done in that way,” she said. “Aunt Henrietta will be wild. She is always quarrelling with me about my dresses, and says that I spend twice too much on them. Good gracious! I do trust that I sha’n’t get into trouble about this.”

“You must not,” said Annie; “for if, by any chance, such a thing were to happen, I should never hear the and of it. Oh Mabel! I have done a lot for you. I have in a way made myself responsible. I had to. Mabel – I must tell you, for I think you ought to know – if there is any difficulty in paying Mrs Priestley’s bill, she means to tell Mrs Lyttelton about me – about me! – how I visited her, and asked her for the money; and she has my receipt to show. She put a stamp on it, and made me write my name across the stamp. Oh Mabel! I have done wonderful things for you, and you know it. You can never, never be grateful enough.”

“I suppose I am grateful,” said Mabel. “It was plucky of you to do that for me, Annie, and I am not one to forget.”

“We will enjoy ourselves in Paris,” said Annie. “I know Mrs Priestley won’t send in the account for about three months, so we’ll have a good time first, whatever happens.”

“Oh, if the thing is three months off, I’m not going to fret about it in advance,” said Mabel, who instantly became very talkative and lively.

Chapter Seven
The Poet

The days which passed between the occurrences related in the last chapter and the great prize day went on wings. The girls were all exceedingly busy. If there were many prizes to be won, and there was hard work beforehand to win them, there was the thought, too, of the long and delightful summer holidays to gladden each young heart; the reunion with fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters; the pleasures of the seaside resort or the country house; the knowledge that lessons, however useful in themselves, might be put away for six long, delightful weeks.

The girls were in the best of humour; and, as though Nature herself were in sympathy with them, the sun rose day by day in a cloudless sky, the flowers bloomed in more and more profusion, and the whole world seemed preparing for a grand holiday. Lyttelton School was famed for its roses, and the profusion of roses that blossomed during this special summer was long remembered by every member of the school.

Mabel Lushington was not a girl especially remarkable for conscientiousness. She was now completely under Annie’s spell, who, having won her point, was determined that there should not be a single flaw in her grand scheme. Her whispers about Mabel had spread a rumour in the school that Mabel Lushington, who had long been remarkable for her fine figure, handsome face, and a certain haughtiness of bearing, was also exceedingly clever. It is no easy matter to convert a girl who has hitherto been renowned as a dunce into a genius. Nevertheless, clever Annie managed to effect this object.

“She writes such good verses, you know,” Annie said first to one girl, and then to another; and as Mabel had been forewarned on the subject, she was not taken by surprise when the girls used to crowd round her and beg to see some specimens of her art.

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t!” Mabel would say, blushing and even giggling a little. “Don’t, don’t ask me; I should die of shame.”

These were her invariable retorts, and, as a rule, she managed to excuse herself with a certain amount of success. But schoolgirls are tenacious. The subject of Mabel’s gift for poetry became the general talk of the school, and finally a whole bevy of girls waited on Miss Lushington with the request that she would allow them to sample her poems.

“The fact is,” said Constance Smedley, “seeing is believing. You most read us something, Mabel; you really must.”

Mabel found herself turning pale, and Constance, who was a remarkably keen observer of character, noted the fact. Annie was nowhere within reach. Mabel began to feel as though a torture-screw were put on.

“Come, Mabel,” said Constance, “it is but fair. We love poetry, and will not be hard on you.”

“What I think is this,” said another girl. “Mabel is a satirist; she has been laughing at us all in her sleeve. She writes about us, and doesn’t want us to know. – Come, May, I know that is the case, otherwise you would not be so red.”

“She was pale a minute ago,” said Constance. – “What are you changing colour about, you silly old May? We won’t mind whether you satirise us or not. Come, get your verses.”

“I – I – can’t; I – won’t,” said Mabel. She had not an idea what the girls meant when they spoke of her as a satirist. She wished herself far away. As she said afterwards, she could have sunk through the ground at that moment. Her tortures were at their height when Annie Brooke appeared. Annie and Priscilla were crossing the lawn arm-in-arm. Annie had been talking eagerly. Priscilla, very grave and quiet, was replying in monosyllables. Suddenly Priscilla looked up.

“What is the matter with Mabel?” she said.

“How queer she looks!”

“I had best go to her, I suppose,” said Annie. “She is such an old silly that unless I keep by her side she is sure to do some thing wrong.”

“Here you are, Annie,” cried Constance. “Now you will be on our side. You have assured us that Mabel is not the dunce of the school, but the genius.”

“So she is,” said Annie indignantly. “Who dares to deny it?”

“None of us,” said Constance; “only we want proof.”

“What do you mean?” said Annie, still quite calm in appearance, but feeling a little uncomfortable nevertheless.

“We want proof,” repeated Constance.

“Yes,” said Agnes – “proof.”

“Proof, proof!” echoed several other voices. “Mabel writes verses – very clever verses. We want to see them.”

“So you shall,” said Annie at once.

“Oh Annie, I won’t show them,” said poor Mabel.

“Nonsense, May! that is absurd. Girls, you can see them to-morrow afternoon. To-morrow is our half-holiday; Mabel will read her verses aloud herself to you at four o’clock to-morrow on this identical spot. She has no time now, for the gong has just sounded for tea.”

Mabel turned a flushed, surprised face towards Annie. Priscilla stood perfectly still in unbounded astonishment. The girls were not quite satisfied; still, there was nothing to complain of. They must go to tea now. Immediately after tea school-work would recommence; there would not be a moment of time to read the verses before the following day. Annie, leaving Mabel to her fate, marched into the house, her hand on Constance Smedley’s arm.

“I am glad I came out,” she said. “Poor May is quite abnormally sensitive on the subject of her verses.”

“Nonsense!” said Constance. “If she writes verses she won’t mind our seeing them.”

“She ought not to mind; and if she were an ordinary girl she would not,” said Annie. “But, you see, she is not ordinary. There is many a girl with a genius who, as regards other matters, is even a little silly. The fact is, Mabel is frightened of her own talent.”

“Well, we are glad you came up, for we are quite determined to get a specimen of our genius’s work,” said Constance.

“You shall know all about it; she will read them to you herself. Ta-ta for the present.”

Annie marched to her own place at the tea-table, and nothing more was said. But she was not comfortable. She had got herself and her unfortunate friend into a hornet’s nest. Verses of some sort must be produced; but how? Annie could not write the most abject doggerel. Clever enough with regard to her prose, she was hopeless as a rhymster. Perhaps Priscie could do it. Annie looked wildly at Priscie, but as she looked even this hope faded away. She had had a conversation with that young lady on that very afternoon, and Priscie, although she was to have her extra year at school – for everything was quite arranged now – did not seem to be happy about it. She had even gone to the length of telling Annie that she would prefer learning how to manage a farm-house or becoming a country dressmaker to staying on at Lyttelton School under the present conditions. Annie had assured her that if she failed them now, the mischief she would do would be so incalculable that it would practically never end, and Priscilla had been quieted for the time being. But Priscilla’s conscience must not be further tampered with; Annie was resolved on that point. What, oh! what was she to do?

During the rest of that evening, while apparently busy over her studies, the mind of Annie Brooke was in a whirl. In what sort of way was she to fulfil her promise made to all those odious girls that Mabel would read her verses aloud? She saw that the girls were already slightly suspicious. She knew it was all-important for Mabel’s success when she won the literary prize that the girls’ minds should be already prepared with regard to her genius. If they were really satisfied that she wrote even moderately good verse, they would accept without comment the fact that she had won the prize over Priscilla’s head. But how – oh! how – in what sort of fashion were these verses to be produced?

Annie was in the mood when she would have stopped short at very little. Could she have safely pilfered the verses of anybody else she would have done so; but there was no great store of poetry at the school. The few books out of which the girls learned their different pieces for recitation were too well-known to be tampered with, and yet Annie must do something. Her head ached with the enormity of the task which she had so unwittingly undertaken. Why, oh! why had she started that awful idea of Mabel’s poetical genius in the school? Far better would it have been even to have the girls’ suspicions slightly aroused by the excellence of her prize essay. Poor Annie had not only to think of this and to solve the riddle set her, but she had to appear before the eyes of her schoolfellows as utterly calm and cool. She was at her wits’-end, and certainly matters were not improved when Mabel that night tapped at her wall – the signal that the girls had arranged between them when it was necessary for one to speak to the other.

It was about eleven at night when Annie, feeling miserable beyond words, crept into Mabel’s room. Mabel was sitting up in bed with all her fine hair hanging about her shoulders.

“I have not had a minute to speak to you before,” said Mabel. “You know perfectly well, Annie, that I never wrote a line of poetry in my life. I can’t abide the stuff; I can’t even read it, far lees write it. And now what is to be done? You are going to produce a specimen of my verse which I am to read aloud before all those odious girls to-morrow!”

“Oh, I’ll manage it,” said Annie; “only don’t keep me now, May. I had to start that little rumour in order to make it all safe for you on prize day. You don’t suppose, darling did May, that I have brought you as far as this with such wonderful success in order to desert you now? You leave it to me, May Flower. I’ll manage it for you somehow.”

Mabel lay back on her pillow. “I did get an awful fright,” she said. “I can’t tell you how terrible it was when they all clustered round me, and Agnes remarked one thing about me, and Constance another. Agnes said I was a satirist. What on earth is a satirist, Annie?”

“Oh, not you, darling, at any rate,” said Annie, kissing her friend. “Poor May! that is the very last thing you could ever be.”

“I know you think me very stupid,” said Mabel in an offended tone. “It is too awful to give a girl the imputation of a genius, when you know all the time that she is an absolute fool.”

“A very pretty one, at any rate,” said Annie, kissing her friend again. “You’re not offended, silly May, because I said you were not a satirist? Why, a satirist is an awful creature, dreaded by everybody. A satirist is a person who makes fun of her best friends. Now, you would never make fun of your own Annie, would you?”

“No, indeed! I am glad I am not a satirist,” said May. “What a horror those girls must think me!”

“Go to by-by now, May, and leave me to settle things for you,” said Annie; and she crept back to her own bed.

Chapter Eight
A Touch of the Sun

Towards morning a thought came to Annie. She could not quite tell when it first darted through her brain. Perhaps it came in a dream. She was never quite certain, but it certainly caused her to jump, and it made her heart beat tumultuously.

“I wonder,” she said aloud; and then she added, “The very thing!” Then she said once more, “I will do it, or my name is not Annie Brooke.”

That morning the mistress and the girls missed the pleasant face of Annie Brooke from the breakfast-table. Mabel Lushington, as her greatest friend, was begged to go to her room to see if anything was the matter. She tapped at Annie’s door. A very faint reply came, and Mabel entered in much consternation. She found her friend lying in bed, a handkerchief wrung out of eau-de-Cologne and water on her brow, her hair dishevelled, her face pale.

“Oh Annie, you are ill!” said poor Mabel. “What is wrong?”

“My head, dear; it aches so badly.”

“Oh, I am sorry!” said Mabel. “Mrs Lyttelton sent me upstairs to know what is wrong.”

“Tell her she must not be at all alarmed,” said Annie. “It is just one of my very worst headaches, no more. I sha’n’t be able to do any lessons to-day. But I will creep out into the garden presently. I want air and perfect quiet. I’ll get into one of the hammocks in the garden and lie there. Tell them all not to be a bit anxious, for I know what I want is rest.”

“You do look bad,” said Mabel. “Dear Annie, I know I am the cause of it.”

“You are most truly,” thought Annie under her breath. But aloud she said, “No, dear, not at all; I am subject to headaches.”

“I never knew you with one before,” said Mabel.

“I have kept them to myself, darling; but Mrs Lyttelton knows, for I told her. This is just worse than the others, and I can’t keep it to myself. If Miss Phillips likes to come up, she might bring me a cup of tea and a little toast. I couldn’t eat anything else, indeed. Now, love, go down; don’t be distressed; your Annie will be all right in the afternoon.”

Mabel longed to say, “What are you going to do about the poem?” but in sight of that pale presence with its look of suffering, and the bondage on the head, she thought that such a remark would be quite too heartless. She stepped, therefore, very softly out of the room, and going downstairs, made a most effective announcement with regard to Annie.

“She says it is nothing,” remarked Mabel, who was almost in tears; “but she looks quite dreadful – so ghastly white.”

Little did Mabel know that Annie had smeared powder over her face to give it that death-like appearance. She had managed it with great skill, and trusted to its not being noticed.

“Miss Phillips,” said Mrs Lyttelton, “will you go and see what is wrong? If Annie is feverish we must get a doctor. She may have a little touch of the sun, my dears; it is always unwise to be out too much this hot weather.”

“She looked awfully flushed,” said one girl, “when we met her in the High Street yesterday. It was after she had been with Mrs Priestley.”

“It must be a touch of the sun,” said Mrs Lyttelton; “perhaps I had better go to her myself.”

“Let me go first, dear Mrs Lyttelton,” said Miss Phillips; “I can soon let you know if there is anything wrong.”

Accordingly, Miss Phillips went gently upstairs Annie had the curtains drawn at the windows, but the windows themselves had their sashes open. She was lying in such a position that the powder on her face could not be noticed. When Miss Phillips came in Annie uttered a groan.

“Oh, why do you trouble?” she said, opening half an eye and looking at the mistress.

Her dread was that Mrs Lyttelton herself might appear. It would be difficult to hide the powder from her. Old Phillips, however, as she termed her, was a person easily imposed upon. “Don’t fuss about me, please,” said Annie. “I have just a bad headache. I am sorry I can’t be in the schoolroom this morning; but I just can’t. I am not a bit hot – not a bit – but my head is dreadful. I want to go out and lie in one of the hammocks in the garden. Do you think Mrs Lyttelton will let me?”

“Indeed she will, poor dear!” said Miss Phillips. “She is ever so sorry for you. You do look bad, Annie. Wouldn’t you like me to draw back the curtain, dear? Your room is so dark.”

“Oh, please don’t!” said Annie. “I can’t bear the light.”

“Well, my dear – well, of course – how thoughtless of me! I have brought you some tea.”

“Thank you; I shall be glad of a cup.”

“Poor child! Then you wouldn’t like to see Mrs Lyttelton herself?”

“Not for the world,” said Annie with unnecessary vehemence. But then she added prettily, “It is so sweet of her to think of it, and for little me – as if I were of any consequence. It’s just a headache, and I’ll be all right in the garden, and at dinner-time you will see me looking just as usual.”

“I hope so, indeed,” said Miss Phillips, who went downstairs to report that Annie was singularly pale, but not in the least feverish, and that her great desire was to lie in a hammock during the entire morning in the shady garden.

“Go up at once and tell her that she has my permission,” said Mrs Lyttelton.

Miss Phillips opened the door very softly. Annie was still lying with her eyes shut, the bandage at once shading and concealing her face; but the cheeks, the tip of the little nose, and the chin were all dreadfully white; only the pretty lips were still rosy.

Annie just opened languid eyes.

“I am better, really,” she said in the faintest and most patient voice.

“You poor, sweet thing,” said Miss Phillips. “How I sympathise with you! I get those frantic headaches myself sometimes.”

“It hurts me even to talk,” said Annie. “I do value your sympathy, but I can’t express what I feel. May I go into the garden? Did you find out?”

“Yes; Mrs Lyttelton has given you her permission. I am so sorry, dear, that none of us will be able to be with you. Mrs Lyttelton herself is going to drive to London, and of course the rest of us will be busy; but if you want any one, love, I could send one of the maids to you.”

“I shall want nothing,” said Annie, whose voice, in her eagerness, had suddenly become strong. Any one who was not poor Phillips would have been suspicious on the spot. “I am so dreadfully sorry,” said Annie, “that you should be put out about me; but if I am allowed to treat my headache in my own way, I shall be all right by early dinner. Now go, dear, won’t you? I will get dressed and creep down to the garden as soon as lessons begin.”

“You are such a thoughtful, unselfish girl,” said Miss Phillips. “Anybody else who looked so terribly ill would make a fuss.”

“Sweet Miss Phillips!” murmured Annie; and with these words sounding in her ear Miss Phillips left the room.

The moment she did so Annie sprang to a sitting position on her bed. She flung the bandage across the room with a petulant movement, and the next instant she had locked the door and begun an active and hurried toilet. The powder was removed. The small, fair face assumed its normal complexion, and by the time prayers were over and the girls were all assembled in the different class-rooms, Annie, in her neat cotton dress, wearing a big shady hat, with gloves drawn over her small white hands, and a parasol ready to shade her from the sun, stood waiting by her open window.

Presently she heard a welcome sound – the noise of wheels disappearing down the avenue. Now was her time. Across the lawn she went. The hammocks were there, but Annie had no use for them at present. Until she was well out of sight of the house she did not dare to run, but when a depression in the ground hid the house from view she put wings to her feet, and flew panting and racing along by the shrubbery, until, at the farthest end, she found a small postern door.

This door opened by means of a certain catch, so that to the uninitiated it always seemed locked, whereas to the initiated it would open any minute. Annie was one of the initiated. She let herself out being very careful to close the door after her, so that it would respond to that same apparently gentle touch when she wished to come back. It was most important that she should make all things right with regard to the door, as by that means she saved at least half-an-hour of her precious – her most precious time. Oh, if only Miss Phillips could see her now! Where was the pallid, suffering girl? Surely she was not represented by this red-faced, panting, strong-looking creature who was careering along the dusty roads en route for Hendon.

By-and-by she reached the suburbs, turned down a side street, and knocked loudly at a little green door. The door was opened by a woman who was evidently at once the owner of the house and her own servant.

“How do you do, Miss Brooke?” she said, looking at Annie in some astonishment. “I am very sorry indeed, miss, but Susie has been having her bad days, and your dresses are not ready for you. She’ll send them down this evening, if possible; but when her back aches at its worst she cannot manage the machine, miss; so I do hope, Miss Brooke, that you won’t be hard on her.”

“Not at all; I am very sorry for her,” said Annie in her gentle voice. “May I go in and talk to her for a few minutes, Mrs Martin?”

“To be sure, miss; you will find her upstairs in the sewing-room.”

Annie seemed to know her way quite well about this house. She ran up some very steep stairs and entered a low room which had at the end a sloping roof. There was a bed tucked as it were out of sight under the eaves; but right in the fall blaze of the summer sun, and where the room was most stiflingly hot, sat a very pallid girl with a large, over hanging brow, pale, tired-looking eyes, and a sensitive mouth.

The girl was bending over a large sewing-machine, the work of which she was guiding with her hand, while her feet worked the treadles. The moment she saw Annie she looked at her with a great rush of colour spreading over her face.

“Why, Miss Brooke!” she said.

“Ah,” said Annie, “you are behaving very badly indeed to me, Susie. I have just seen your mother, and she says that your back is so bad you can’t do your machining, and in consequence my work —mine, Susan – is not finished. Oh Susan! it is somebody else’s dress you are making now, and you are quite well enough to do your machining. I am surprised.”

“It is true what mother said, all the same, miss,” replied the girl, interrupting her words as she spoke with a great and exhausting fit of coughing. “I ain’t fit for no work, and this room is that stifling with the sun pouring in and no means of opening more than that little crack of the window. I haven’t done your work, miss, for I knew you ’ud be kind, and Mrs Hodge at the mill is so cross if I don’t carry out her least wish. But I meant – I did indeed, miss – to go on with your things this afternoon. I did most truly, miss, for it’s a real pleasure to work for you, Miss Brooke.”

“Never mind my things to-day,” said Annie; “you’re not fit, and that is the simple truth. You ought to go downstairs, Susan, and get your mother to take you into the park; that is what you want.”

“I may want it, miss,” said Susan, “but I won’t get it, for mother have her hands full with the parlour lodger and the drawing-room lodger. Much time she do have for walking out with me as though I were a fine lady.”

“Poor Susie!” said Annie; “and you so clever, too.”

“Ah, miss, nothing frets mother like me thinking myself clever. She says that all I want is to know the three R’s – reading, writing, and ’rithmetic – that’s how she calls ’em. She hates my books, miss; and as to my thoughts – oh, dear Miss Brooke! you are the only one in all the world as knows about them.”

“And I want to help you,” said Annie. “I have come here all the way this morning to ask you to lend me that manuscript book of yours. I mean to show your lovely poems to a great, clever, and learned man, and if by chance he should publish any of them, you would be famous, Susan, and you need never do this horrible grinding work any more.”

“Oh, miss,” said the poor girl, “you don’t say so!”

“I do say so, Susie; and I suppose I ought to know. Give me the book, dear, at once; don’t keep me, for I haven’t a minute. These are school hours, and I had to pretend I had a headache in order to get away to see you. You must let me manage about your poetry, Susie; and of course you will never tell.”

“Why, miss, is it likely?”

“Well, fetch the book, then.”

Susie crossed the room, went on her knees before an old chest of drawers, and with the colour now high in her wasted cheeks and her light eyes darker with emotion, she presented the treasured book to Annie.

“There is my last bit, miss; you will find it at the end. It’s ‘Thoughts on the Sunset’ I was thinking them in reference to my own early death, miss, and they’re very affecting indeed. Perhaps you will show them the first, miss, for they seem to me the very best I have done.”

Susie looked with a world of pathos at Annie. Her eyes said as plainly as eyes could speak, “Oh! do read the poem before you go, and tell me what you think of it.” Annie read the message in the eyes, but had not an idea of acceding to poor Susie’s wish.

“You will have your book back in a few days,” she said, “and I do hope I’ll have good news for you; and here is half-a-crown, and you needn’t hurry about my things. Good-bye, Susie. Do go into the park if you can.”

Susan nodded. She felt so grateful to Annie, and so excited, that she could not speak. With the book tucked under her arm, Annie flew downstairs.

She was much annoyed at being intercepted in the passage by Mrs Martin.

“I do ’ope, miss,” said that poor woman, “that you ain’t been ’ard on my girl. She does do her very best; for, what with the unpickin’ of your old dresses, and what with tryin’ to turn ’em into new ones, it don’t seem as though it were worth while. You pays her very little, miss; and what with never givin’ her anythin’ new, it don’t seem worth the trouble, that it don’t.”

“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Annie, who in her moment of victory was inclined to be kind to any one; “but, you see, I take an interest in Susan for other matters. She is not well, and she wants rest. I am so glad to have some one to alter my old things, and if I did not give the work to Susan, I should have to employ a girl I know at home. But I will try – I really will – to give her some new plain cotton dresses to make for me later on. In the meantime, Mrs Martin, I have been recommending her to go for a walk in the park. She has great talent, and her life ought not to be sacrificed.”

“There, miss!” said Mrs Martin, putting her arms akimbo and looking with great dissatisfaction at Annie. “It’s you as encourages her in scribblin’ of that poetic stuff. Never did I hear such rubbish in all my born days. If it wasn’t for you, miss, she would burn all the stuff instead of sittin’ up a-composin’ of it. What with sunsets, and deathbeds, and heartaches, and green grass, and other nonsense, I don’t know where I be when I listen to her words; I don’t really. I see you’ve got the book under your arm now, miss; and I do wish you’d burn it – that I do!”

“It would hurt her very much indeed if I did,” said Annie; for a further thought had darted through her brain at Mrs Martin’s words. Here would be an easy way to hide her own deed for ever and ever. If Mrs Martin sanctioned the burning of her daughter’s book, surely Annie’s wicked scheme would be concealed for ever.

“I agree with you,” said Annie, “that it is bad for poor Susan to write so much poetry. Her heart is set on it, I know; still, if you disapprove – ”

“That I do, miss; I wish you’d give me the book now, and I’ll keep it under lock and key.”

“No, no,” said Annie eagerly. “Don’t do that on any account whatever. I have thought of a much better plan. She has lent me the book, for I promised to read her poems, poor girl! and to talk them over with a friend of mine. I need not give them back to her for the present.”