“I don’t know what it means,” said Dorothy slowly. “It gave me the sensation of there being a dog waiting round the corner somewhere, to jump out and bite me.”
“Don’t be a silly sheep, Dorothy; the meaning is plain enough,” put in Margaret, who had left her seat, and was leaning over Hazel, staring down at the quotation. “What it just means is this: we have in us wonderful powers of free will, and the ability to make our own fate. The thing that lies dormant, but not dead, is the influence upon us of the things we come up against in life. If we take them one way they will slay us—that is, let us down mentally, and morally, and every way; if we take them the other way—perhaps the very much harder way—they will lift us up and make us noble.”
“Well done, old girl; you will be a senior wrangler yet, even if Dorothy or Rhoda snatch the Mutton Bone from your trembling jaws,” cried Hazel, giving Margaret a resounding whack on the back, while Jessie Wayne clapped her hands in applause, and only Dorothy was silent.
The old quotation had hit her hard. Margaret’s explanation of it hit her harder still. She was thinking of the thing which had seemed to fade out of life with the death of Mrs. Wilson, and she was wondering what its effect would be on her, and what was the writing for her in the book of Fate.
Margaret turned to her books again; but before she plunged into them she said slowly, “I think we are our own Fate—that is, we have the power to be our own Fate.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THAT DAY AT HOME
The term ended with Dorothy at the top of the school, and she went home feeling that the Lamb Bursary might be well within her grasp, if only she could keep up her present rate of work. The girl who was running her hardest was Rhoda. Hazel and Margaret, very close together in their weekly position, were too far behind to be a serious menace.
The first thing which struck Dorothy when she reached home was the careworn look of her father. Dr. Sedgewick had not been very well; some days it was all he could do to keep about, doing the work of his large practice.
“Mother, why doesn’t father have an assistant to tide him over while he is so unfit?” asked Dorothy.