"It's hateful to be poor," thought Dorothy. "I want pretty dresses and parties like other girls;" and she went home with the old wrinkle between her brows, and a little droop at the corners of her mouth.
If Aunt Barbara noticed these and divined the cause, she made no comment; she did not remind Dorothy of how much she had given up on her behalf, or of what real sacrifice it entailed to send her to Avondale. She took the opportunity, however, one day to urge her to work her hardest at school.
"You may have to earn your own living some time, child," she said. "If anything happens to me, my small pension goes back to the owner of the Sherbourne estate. I shall be able to leave you nothing. A good education is the only thing I can give you, so you must try to make the most of it."
"Shall I have to be a teacher?" asked Dorothy blankly.
"I don't know. It will depend on what I can have you trained for," replied Miss Sherbourne.
She was hurt sometimes by Dorothy's manner; the girl seemed dissatisfied, though she was evidently making an effort to hide the fact.
"It's hard for her to mix at school with girls who have so many more advantages," thought Aunt Barbara. "Was I wise to send her to Avondale, I wonder? Is it having the effect of making her discontented? It's only lately she's grown like this—she was never so before."
Discontented exactly described Dorothy's state of mind. She considered that Fate had used her unkindly. The prospect of gaining her own living was extremely distasteful to her. She hated the idea of becoming a teacher, and no other work seemed any more congenial.
"I'd always looked forward to enjoying myself when I was grown up," she thought bitterly, "and now it will be nothing but slave."
At present Dorothy was viewing life entirely from her own standpoint, and was suffering from an attack of that peculiar complaint called "self-itis". She was aggrieved that the world had not given her more, and it never struck her to think of what she might give to the world. It seemed as if she could no longer enjoy all the little simple occupations in which she had been accustomed to take so much pleasure—she was tired of her stamps and postcards, bookbinding and clay modelling had lost their attraction, and she was apathetic on the subject of fancy work.