cake for my tea, as if anything to eat could make up for not seeing Mother!—or pencils, or books, or stamps. I’d give all the stationery in the world if I could only wake up and find it was a dream, and that I was really going home!”

“I don’t think that is quite the right way to look at it,” said Bertha, seating herself elegantly on a chair, and speaking in her precise, little, grown-up manner. “We don’t expect these things to ‘make up’; they are not of much value in themselves, but you must think of their meaning, and that is that we all love you, and are sorry for you, and want to do everything in our power to help you.”

“Yes, yes, I know; you are all angels, and I am a wretch!” cried poor Mildred dismally. “I don’t deserve that you should be so kind. I should like to be grateful and patient, but I can’t! Bertha, if you were in my place, and had to stay here at school all alone, without even Lois or a single one of the girls, what would you do?”

Bertha reflected.

“I think I should cry a good deal at first,” she said honestly, “and lie awake at nights, and have a headache, but I should try to be resigned. I have never had anything very hard to bear, and sometimes I have almost wished that I had. I don’t mean, of course, that I want anyone belonging to me to fall ill like your brother. I should like a trouble that affected myself alone, so that I might see how well I could bear it. I love to read about people who have had terrible trials, and have been brave and heroic, and overcome them all. I have an ambition to see if I could imitate them.”

“Well, I haven’t,” said Mildred, “not a bit; and you won’t like it either, Bertha, when it comes to your turn! Besides, I don’t see that there is much chance of being heroic in living alone by yourself in a ladies’ school. Heroes have to fight against armies, and plagues, and terrible calamities, and I have to face only dullness and disappointment. Even if I bear them well it will be no more than is expected of me. ... There would be nothing heroic about it!”

Bertha knit her brows in thoughtful fashion.

“I am not so sure,” she said. “I think it must be pretty easy to be brave when you are marching with hundreds of other people, while drums are beating and flags waving, and you remember that England expects you to do your duty, and that the whole world will talk of it to-morrow if you do well. It would be quite easy for you, Mildred; for you are never afraid, and you would get so excited that you would hardly know what you were doing. It will be much harder for you to sit still here and be cheerful; and to do the hardest thing must be heroic! I will write to you often, Mildred; all the girls will write. You will have heaps of letters.”

“That will be nice. I love letters,” said Mildred gratefully. She cheered up a little at the prospect, and talked to her friend for the next half-hour without relapsing into tears. Nevertheless, the remembrance of the poor, disfigured face weighed heavily on Bertha’s heart, and she could talk of nothing else, as she and Lois finished their packing later on the same evening.

“I feel quite mean to be going home when poor Mildred is left here alone,” she said. “And we have such a happy time. Father and Mother are so good, they give us almost everything we ask in the holidays. I wonder—” She stopped short as if struck with a brilliant idea, and stared into her sister’s eyes.

“I wonder—” echoed Lois immediately, and her voice had the same ring, her face the same curious expression.

The pupils at Milvern House were often amazed at the instinctive manner in which these two sisters leapt to an understanding of each other’s meaning, and the present instance it was evident that Lois needed no explanation of that mysterious “I wonder.” “We are twins, you know,” they were accustomed to say, when questioned about this peculiarity, and it seemed as if this fact did indeed save them from much conversational exercise.

“We will see!” said Bertha again, and Lois nodded her head and repeated, “We will see!” while her face lit up with smiles.

But Mildred did not know what pleasant schemes her friends were plotting on her behalf, and she lay, face downwards, crying heart-brokenly upon her bed.