"Can you stand it as long as that, Marian?"
The mere thought of feeling badly about not being home for the holidays made the child laugh.
"You are the queerest girl," exclaimed Florence, "you cry when I don't see anything to cry about and you laugh when I should think you would cry."
Marian checked an impulse to explain. How could Florence understand? Florence, whose beautiful mother smiled from the round, gold frame, the girl whose sister and brothers waited to welcome her home.
"If they were mine," said Marian, gazing wistfully at the miniatures, "I would never leave them. I would rather be a dunce than go away to school."
"Then my father wouldn't own you," said Florence, laughing. "Mamma says she's afraid he wouldn't have any patience if I disgraced him in school. You ought to belong to him, Marian, he would be proud of you. You know your lessons almost without studying and you have higher standings than the big girls. You've been highest in all your classes so far, haven't you?"
"Yes," was the reply, "except in geometry, but what of it? Nobody cares."
"Don't your folks at home? Aren't they proud of you?"
"I used to hope they would be, Florence; but I tell you, nobody cares."
"Well, haven't you any grandfathers or grandmothers or other aunts or uncles?"