[CHAPTER VII]
TRIALS
"Oh, how full of briars is this working day world."
MISS BILLY had broken her shoe-string. There was not another in the house and the clock pointed half past eight of a school morning.
"If you're ready," said Theodore, putting his head in the door, "I'll walk to school with you. I have something to tell you."
"I'm not ready, and don't expect to be," said Miss Billy crossly, giving the lace a pull and breaking it again. "There now, it can never be tied. I shan't go to school at all this morning, so there!"
Beatrice was shaking the pillows at the open window. "Why Wilhelmina Lee!" she exclaimed,—"what a temper! How do you ever expect to get through the world if the breaking of a shoe-string upsets you?"
"Oh, it's all very well for you to moralise," retorted Miss Billy, trying to repair the offending lacing, "you who have nothing to do but stay at home and play lady, or do a little dusting. Look at me,—going to school every day, taking two music lessons a week, 'way back in my Latin, and those geraniums are not set out yet and it's going to rain this morning. It's enough to make any one wish to die."
"We've no time for a funeral this morning," said Mrs. Lee, bustling cheerily into the room. "Beatrice, I shall have to ask you to wash the breakfast dishes. Maggie's toothache is worse, and she is getting ready to go to the dentist. I promised her that I would make the pudding and put the bread into the pans."