"But why do you want to go, Lyndall?"

"There is nothing helps in this world," said the child slowly, "but to be
very wise, and to know everything--to be clever."

"But I should not like to go to school!" persisted the small freckled face.

"And you do not need to. When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go;
you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; but
I," said Lyndall, "will have nothing. I must learn."

"Oh, Lyndall! I will give you some of my sheep," said Em, with a sudden
burst of pitying generosity.

"I do not want your sheep," said the girl slowly; "I want things of my own.
When I am grown up," she added, the flush on her delicate features
deepening at every word, "there will be nothing that I do not know. I
shall be rich, very rich; and I shall wear not only for best, but every
day, a pure white silk, and little rose-buds, like the lady in Tant
Sannie's bedroom, and my petticoats will be embroidered, not only at the
bottom, but all through."

The lady in Tant Sannie's bedroom was a gorgeous creature from a fashion-
sheet, which the Boer-woman, somewhere obtaining, had pasted up at the foot
of her bed, to be profoundly admired by the children.

"It would be very nice," said Em; but it seemed a dream of quite too
transcendent a glory ever to be realized.