preamble, announced the purport of the letter in her hand.

"It has come at last, Bessie, the recall that I have kept you in mind
was sure to come sooner or later; not that we shall be any the less
grieved to lose you, dear. Father will miss his clever little Bessie
sadly,"--here the kind mother paused for emotion, and Bessie, athirst to
know all, asked if she might read the letter.

The letter was not written for her reading, and Mrs. Carnegie hesitated;
but Bessie's promptitude overruled her doubt in a manner not unusual
with them. She took possession of the document, and sat down in the deep
window-seat to study it; and she had read but a little way when there
appeared signs in her face that it did not please her. Her mother knew
these signs well; the stubborn set of the lips, the resolute depression
of the level brows, much darker than her hair, the angry sparkle of her
eyes, which never did sparkle but when her temper was ready to flash out
in impetuous speech. Mrs. Carnegie spoke to forewarn her against rash
declarations.

"It is of no use to say you _won't_, Bessie, for you _must_. Your father
said, before he went out, that we have no choice but to let you go."

Bessie did not condescend to any rejoinder yet. She was reading over
again some passage of the letter by which she felt herself peculiarly
affronted. She continued to the end of it, and it was perhaps lucky that
her tenderness had then so far prevailed over her wrath that she could
only give way to tears of self-pity, instead of voice to the defiant
words that had trembled on her tongue a minute ago.

"I did hope, dear, that you would not take it so much to heart," said