"Oh, was there anything so splendid! A lovely, lovely gold locket with a ruby cherry on the right side and a wonderful inscription on the left side, and a parchment scroll, father, in which the full particulars of the great Scholarship were written down, and besides that, a purse of money. Oh, father, a girl would not mind taking money in that way, would she?—and what was the money for?—it was to pay all her fees for a year.
"Every expense connected with the school was to be met by this wonderful purse of money; she was to be educated and called the Cherry Court Scholarship girl, and it was to be a wonderfully proud distinction, I can tell you, and at the end of the year Sir John Wallis was to give another purse of money, and at the end of that year another purse of money, so that the lucky girl who won the Scholarship was to be educated free of expense for three whole years.
"Oh, father, father! I mean to try for it—I mean to try with all my might and main. I don't suppose I'll succeed, but I shall have such a fit of trying—you never knew anything like it in your life. But do you know, perhaps, that what Kitty tries for with all her might and soul she generally wins.
"Oh, dear father, this has made me quite happy and has taken off the worst of my great pain. I feel now that there is hope, for at the end of three years I shall be a well-educated girl—that is, if I win the Scholarship, and then perhaps you will allow me to come out to you to India. I am not without hope, now, but I should be utterly and completely devoid of it if I had to go and live with Helen Dartmoor.
"Your loving and excited daughter, KITTY."
CHAPTER V.
FLORENCE.
It began to be whispered in the school—at first, it is true, in very low tones and scarcely any words, but just a nod and a single glance—that Mrs. Clavering was very anxious that Kitty should win the Scholarship.
There was really no reason for this rumor to get afloat, but beyond doubt the rumor was afloat, was in the air, and was talked of by the girls—at first, as I have said, scarcely at all, but by and by more and more plainly as the hours flew on towards the Cherry Feast.