Yet two afternoons of the week she determined Sally should not have. But she said to her the next morning that, after thinking things over, she would spare her one afternoon a week, but it must be whenever it was most convenient.
To her surprise Sally replied that she must go on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, or not at all.
"Then it's not at all you'll go!" cried the angry mistress, "and remember, the Town House is not far away!"
"What will you do now?" asked her good Fairy, when Sally was alone.
"I do not quite know," Sally made reply, "I must think it out."
When Wednesday came Sally went to her attic room after dinner, but Mistress Brace took no notice of it. So very quiet had been Maid Sally during the few days past that Mistress Cory Ann thought all had been given up as to books and schooling.
But now Sally put on the print dress, coaxed down her shining hair, put on her shoes, and slipping out without a word to Mistress Brace, she started for the home of the schoolmistress.
She never forgot the pleasure of that first afternoon at the pretty cottage. A canary-bird was trilling songs in a cage hung out on the porch. In the sitting-room, the old mother greeted her from her high-backed, cushioned rocking-chair. The old dame used fine language, and the books, pictures, and solid furniture, everything simple but nice, seemed in a way to belong to the world that Sally herself belonged to.
"You see you don't know just who you are," whispered her Fairy, "but do not mind that, all may be known in good time."
But when Mistress Kent returned from her sister's, and the mother said that Sally had been a good, likely child, and had given her a seed-cake,—Sally was afraid to go home.