"I don't know what's come over you," declared Martha. "You just idle about the house doing nothing at all. Why can't you take your knitting, or a bit of crochet in your fingers?"
"Simply because I don't want to. I wish you'd leave me alone, Martha!" replied Dorothy irritably.
She resented the old servant's interference, for Martha was less patient and forbearing than Aunt Barbara, and hinted pretty plainly sometimes what she thought of her nursling.
So the holidays passed by—dreary ones for Dorothy, who spent whole listless evenings staring at the fire; and drearier still for Aunt Barbara, who made many efforts to interest the girl, and, failing utterly, went about with a new sadness in her eyes and a fresh grief in her heart that she would not have confessed to anyone.
Everybody at Holly Cottage was glad when the term began again.
"I don't hold with holidays," grumbled Martha. "Give young folks plenty of work, say I, and they're much better than mooning about with naught to do. Dorothy's a different girl when she's got her lessons to keep her busy."
To do Dorothy justice, she certainly worked her hardest at the College, though the prospect of becoming a teacher did not strike her as an inspiring goal for her efforts. She put the idea away from her as much as possible, but every now and then it returned like a bad nightmare.
"I should hate to be Miss Pitman," she remarked one day at school. "It must be odious to be a mistress."
"Do you think so?" replied Grace Russell. "Why, I'd love it! I mean to go in for teaching myself some time."
"But will you have to earn your own living? I thought your father was well off," objected Dorothy.