“I don’t consider it so for a minute,” said Annie.
“If it were not for Priscilla there would be a chance. The only one of us who is really clever at composition is Priscilla.”
“She is the one you have to fear. I believe that with a great deal of pains, and perhaps just a little help from me, you could manage to do something quite excellent.”
“I can’t, I can’t!” said Mabel. “There is no good trying.”
Annie’s eyes were very bright, and there had come vivid spots of colour into her cheeks.
“You have got to-night,” she said suddenly, “and you must not lose the chance.”
“Oh! it is useless,” said Mabel.
“Leave it to me,” remarked Annie. “I will come to your room after you go to bed to-night; I will tap twice on the wall, and you will know it is I. I am so sorry for you, Mabel; it is really too bad of your aunt Henrietta.”
“It is just like her,” said the angry Mabel. “She knew I could not possibly win the prize, and so she set me this test. Now, when I have to write to her meekly and say, ‘Dear, kind Auntie,—Your Mabel came out worst of all the girls who tried for the literature prize,’ she will write again and say, ‘Who was right, Mabel, you or I?’ Oh, I would give all the world to prove her wrong!”
“I quite understand,” said Annie; “I’d feel precisely the same if it were Uncle Horace; but then, with all his faults, Uncle Horace would not set me an impossible task. How queer, how queer is the world; you pine to leave school, and Priscilla Weir would give her eyes to stay! Yet poor Priscilla, who is almost a genius, has to go, and you, who are not a bit of a genius, and will never appreciate the learning that is given at the school, will have to stay.”