"I expect I ought to, and I expect it is something dreadful; but if I am happier so, why can't I go on being _gauche_ ?" "Father said you were very shy, but he didn't think you were the other thing--_gauche_." "Did he ?" cried poor Kitty, brightening; but her face soon fell again.
"Father doesn't notice things as quickly as some people do--Aunt Pike, and Lady Kitson, and others; and I expect they are right.

It is always the disagreeable people and the disagreeable things that are right.
Did Aunt Pike say the same thing of you ?" "No; she said I had too much--it was a long word--too much self--self-- oh, I know, confidence--self-confidence.

I don't know what it means, but I am sure I haven't got it; and if I have," wound up Betty defiantly, "I _won't_ get cured of it.

Do you know what it means, Kitty ?" "Yes," said Kitty thoughtfully, "I think I do; but I don't see how going to the same school can cure us both." At the end of a few days Mrs.Pike went away to get Anna, and to collect their numerous belongings; and the doctor's household felt that it had before it one week of glorious freedom, but only one.
In anticipation of this, their last happy free time, the children had made plans for each day of it, intending to enjoy them to the utmost.
Somehow, though, things were different.

There was a shadow even over their freedom--if it was not there in the morning, it fell before night--and they returned home each day weighted with a sense of weariness and depression.