lady? Nay, by all the unintelligible Powers, she should enjoy every
help that he could possibly afford her. Bless her bright face and
her clever tongue! Yes, it was now a settled thing that she should
be trained for a schoolteacher. An atmosphere of refinement must be
made for her; she must be better dressed, more delicately fed.

The bitter injustice of it! In the outcome you are already
instructed. Long before Clara was anything like ready to enter upon
a teacher's career, her father's ill-luck once more darkened over
the home. Clara had made no progress since Miss Harrop's day. The
authorities directing her school might have come forward with aid of
some kind, had it appeared to them that the girl would repay such
trouble; but they had their forebodings about her. Whenever she
chose, she could learn in five minutes what another girl could
scarcely commit to memory in twenty; but it was obviously for the
sake of display. The teachers disliked her; among the pupils she had
no friends. So at length there came the farewell to school and the
beginning of practical life, which took the shape of learning to
stamp crests and addresses on note-paper. There was hope that before
long Clara might earn thirteen shillings a week.

The bitter injustice of it! Clara was seventeen now, and understood
the folly of which she had been guilty a few years ago, but at the
same time she felt in her inmost heart the tyranny of a world which
takes revenge for errors that are inevitable, which misleads a
helpless child and then condemns it for being found astray. She
could judge herself, yes, better than Sidney Kirkwood could judge
her. She knew her defects, knew her vices, and a feud with fate
caused her to accept them defiantly. Many a time had she sobbed out
to herself, 'I wish I could neither read nor write! I wish I had