CHAPTER I

TRAGIC REALITY

SATURDAY morning.

May, in mockery, painted the skies her most radiant blue, the sun set the bees humming in the ivy, and all along the garden path goldenhearted tulips lifted their exultant scarlet heads -but nothing might comfort her. She walked out silently, though inwardly she raged like a caged animal, shaken with that wild anger which only children feel, suddenly deprived of their freedom for some reason they cannot understand. At nine o'clock she was left at Downwood. It was one of the coldest, bleakest places she had seen, with open windows, worn-out carpets, and a mass of white paint inside, and outside a long weedy lawn and a few flower-pots. Her first impression was the incessant noise. Girls seemed everywhere, all in white blouses and blue skirts, their hair tied back with an enormous bow. Miss Sampson

met her, took her into the library, and told her to wait. Books with torn covers lined the room, and Miss Sampson's little black dog lay in the only arm-chair. Nancy walked over to it and waited, instinctively feeling that a dog was better than being alone with a lot of noisy girls. Never, never would she speak to any one of them, for she knew that was the reason she was snatched from her dreams and freedom and sent to school. Dreams! At the bare thought of them blind impotent rage swept over her, the rage that only children feel, utterly helpless, dragged down by gigantic forces they cannot understand. Vaguely she wondered if this was what loneliness meant. Through the window the hills shone in the sun, and all the happy afternoons she had spent up there among the bee orchids came back to her. Why had she never realised her happiness then?

Miss Sampson came in and called her; whatever she had to face she would meet as Hannibal would have wished, so, flinging her head back, she followed her into the school hall.

A good many girls sat writing at small desks. All who dared stared at her. "Sit down, dear," said Miss Sampson, pointing to a vacant desk, "and write me a nice essay on the Sea Power of the Age of Elizabeth.”

Fresh from Hakluyt, Nancy began pages on the subject as soon as Miss Sampson left the room, but after a minute all the girls turned on her.

"What's your name?" asked the girl next to her.

Nancy," she answered involuntarily.
How old are you ? "

"Fifteen."

"Where were you at school last?" This from the back row.

It was too much, the reality of school burst too miserably upon her. Nancy drew herself together with all the dignity and defiance she possessed and burst out with "I have never been to school before; I do not approve of schools, and I do not intend to remain here."

Nobody answered, but some one in the back row muttered to her neighbour "Funny fish." Odious expression. Nancy wrote on, till presently the oldest girl there turned round and asked her, quite kindly, if she had travelled much.

"I know Europe pretty well," Nancy answered, unsuspectingly falling into the trap, unaware that this truthful answer would label her as conceited and extraordinary until she left the school. If one has travelled it is the rule