She is a miserable old woman," said the girl, throwing the leaf from her; "but I intend to go to school." "And if she won't let you ?" "I shall make her." "How ?" The child took not the slightest notice of the last question, and folded her small arms across her knees.
"But why do you want to go, Lyndall ?" "There is nothing helps in this world," said the child slowly, "but to be very wise, and to know everything--to be clever." "But I should not like to go to school!" persisted the small freckled face.
"And you do not need to.

When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go; you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; but I," said Lyndall, "will have nothing.

I must learn." "Oh, Lyndall! I will give you some of my sheep," said Em, with a sudden burst of pitying generosity.
"I do not want your sheep," said the girl slowly; "I want things of my own.

When I am grown up," she added, the flush on her delicate features deepening at every word, "there will be nothing that I do not know.

I shall be rich, very rich; and I shall wear not only for best, but every day, a pure white silk, and little rose-buds, like the lady in Tant Sannie's bedroom, and my petticoats will be embroidered, not only at the bottom, but all through." The lady in Tant Sannie's bedroom was a gorgeous creature from a fashion-sheet, which the Boer-woman, somewhere obtaining, had pasted up at the foot of her bed, to be profoundly admired by the children.
"It would be very nice," said Em; but it seemed a dream of quite too transcendent a glory ever to be realized.
At this instant there appeared at the foot of the kopje two figures--the one, a dog, white and sleek, one yellow ear hanging down over his left eye; the other, his master, a lad of fourteen, and no other than the boy Waldo, grown into a heavy, slouching youth of fourteen.