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“You are very good, my dear child, in wishing to be of use, but what can fifteen pounds do towards educating four boys, who have not brains enough among them all to get a ten-pound scholarship, nor steadiness and sense of honour enough to go to and from the Grammar-School like gentlemen? What with their school-fees, and the bills I have to pay for the damage they do, it needs a millionaire to look after them.”

And Mr Anstruther rose abruptly from his seat, said grace, and departed to his study. It was a constant disappointment to him that only his eldest daughter had inherited his own scholarly tastes, and that his younger children, although dowered with their mother’s splendid bodily health, had inherited also her distaste for steady mental work. Sometimes the disparity made him a little unjust to Cecil, as if his disappointment were her fault, and the sense of this struck her to-day so keenly that, worn-out and discouraged, she pushed back her chair from the table and burst into tears. The children stood around in impotent alarm; then, their consciences no doubt pricking them, one after another crept softly from the room. For a little while Cecil sobbed hopelessly; then a sudden resolution came to her, and she started up. Miss Arbuthnot’s words had returned to her memory, and she saw that if she could not be useful with the children at home, she might at any rate help to provide the money necessary to give them the education they so greatly needed. With ferocious haste she twisted her soft auburn hair into a rough knot, secured it by sticking in the pins in handfuls, and dashed away the tears from her brown eyes, now blurred and piteous with crying. Without giving herself time to repent, she sat down at the writing-table in the window, and began to write. The chair and table shook with her sobs as she did so, but she scrambled through her letter as fast as she could, sealed and stamped it, and then, snatching up her hat, rushed across the road to the pillar-box with the important missive, determined not to trust any of the boys.