However, I lingered a moment after Alice, and then turned back and said:
"Please forgive me, you can't think how sorry I am."
"Remember, Margaret," she replied, "that it is not enough to be honourable in your own conduct—you must as far as possible discourage anything dishonourable in other people. I know you would not cheat yourself, but if it is wrong to cheat, it is equally wrong to help some one else to cheat—don't you see? Will you remember this in future—in big things as well as in small? You must not only do right yourself. Your influence must be on the right side too. Certainly, I forgive you. You've been a good girl all this year, and I'm sorry to lose you."
So I went away comforted.
And I came home with never a prize to show. But I had what was better. I had acquired a real love of study which I have never lost. I don't know what became of Alice Thompson, I only hope that she never had to earn her living by teaching. Nelly Gascoyne went home to a jolly family of brothers and sisters and gave herself up to the pleasures and duties of home. Joyce became assistant mistress in a school, and Mabel followed up her successes at school by winning a scholarship at Cambridge a year later.
And I—well, I've never come in first anywhere, but I'm fairly contented with a second place.
THE SILVER STAR.
BY NELLIE HOLDERNESS.
Maysie Grey had set her heart on the Drawing Society's Silver Star. She kept her ambition to herself as a thing too audacious to be put into words. That she possessed talent, the school fully recognised. She was only thirteen, and by dint of steady perseverance was making almost daily progress. Her painting lessons were a source of unmixed pleasure to her, for hers was a nature that never yielded to discouragement, and never magnified difficulties.