of the college. The last few months, Mavis's eyes had been opened to
the straitened circumstances in which her employers lived; she had
lately realised that she owed her bread and butter more to the
kindness of the Miss Mees, than to the fact of her parts as a
teacher being in request at the school. She informed the kind ladies
that she was going to seek her bread elsewhere; upon their offering
the mildest of protests, she had made every effort to translate her
intentions into performance.

This was by no means an easy matter for a comparatively friendless
girl, as Mavis soon discovered. Her numerous applications had, so
far, only resulted in an expenditure of stationery and postage
stamps. Then, Miss Annie Mee kindly volunteered to write to the more
prosperously circumstanced of the few one-time pupils with whom she
had kept up something of a correspondence. Those who replied offered
no suggestion of help, with the exception of Mrs Devitt. So much for
the past: the future stretched, an unexplored country, before her,
which, to one of her sanguine disposition, seemed to offer boundless
opportunities of happiness. It appeared a strange conjunction of
circumstances that she should have been sent for by a person living
in her native place. It seemed fortuitous to Mavis that she should
earn her bread in a neighbourhood where she would be known, if only
because of the high reputation which her dear father had enjoyed. It
all seemed as if it had been arranged like something out of a book.
Amelia's words, referring to the certainty of her marrying, came
into her mind; she tried to dismiss them, but without success. Then,
her thoughts flew back to Charlie Perigal and Archie Windebank,
youthful admirers, rivals for her favours. She wondered what had
become of them; if she should see them again: a thousand things in
which she allowed her imagination to wing itself in sentimental