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"Oh, haven't I?" said Rose. "There's nothing daunts me when I'm put to it. Mother says I'm the very naughtiest little girl she ever come across. She threatens perhaps I'll get ugly, just because I'm so desperate naughty. She says that sometimes when you are so mad with spirits, and so desperately fond of yourself, you fall ill with smallpox and that sort of thing. I don't believe it, of course, but she does hold it over me. She seems as sure that I'll take smallpox as that I'll have a cold. It's queer, isn't it?"

"It's silly, I call it," said Christian. "Now then, Rose, don't let's talk any more about that. If you have got spirit, so have I. Suppose, now, that I don't go to that school."

"How will you manage that?" said Rose

"Did you ever hear of a girl running away?" asked Christian. "That's the thought that has come to me. I thought that if you and I were together we could run away. We could support ourselves, I suppose."

"Not without money," said the practical Rose. "It's a lovely thought—the most daring and truly delicious thought I ever heard of—but it wants money."