accents were firm.

"Now you go and take that horse home. But come straight back and get
to bed so you can get an early start at your practicing in the
morning. Right here I'm going to put my foot down. It isn't because
I want to be harsh--but you never seem to know when to stop a thing.
It's all well and good to be fond of dumb animals, but when it comes
to a point where you can think of nothing else--"

The outstanding import of the terrific and unjust tirade was that
Missy should not go near the sanitarium or the pony for a week.

When mother "put her foot down" like that, hope was gone, indeed.
And a whole week! That was a long, long time when hope is deferred--
especially when one is fifteen and all days are long. At first Missy
didn't see how she was ever to live through the endless period, but,
strangely enough, the dragging days brought to her a change of mood.
It is odd how the colour of our mood, so to speak, can utterly
change; how one day we can desire one kind of thing acutely and
then, the very next day, crave something quite different.

One morning Missy awoke to a dawn of mildest sifted light and
bediamonded dew upon the grass; soft plumes of silver, through the
mist, seemed to trim the vines of the summerhouse and made her catch
her breath in ecstasy. All of a sudden she wanted nothing so much as
to get a book and steal off alone somewhere. The right kind of a
book, of course--something sort of strange and sad that would make
your strange, sad feelings mount up and up inside you till you could
almost die of your beautiful sorrow.