“You can.  It will be madness to refuse.  Think what a chance is offered you.  If you get Miss Renshaw’s instruction you are safe to get that scholarship; and it is for three years, Ruth.  It would send you, with a little help from your grandfather, perhaps to Holloway College, perhaps to Somerville or Newnham, or even Girton.  Perhaps you could try for a scholarship in one of these great colleges afterwards.  You daren’t refuse it.  It means—­oh, it means all the difference in your whole life.”

“I know,” said Ruth.  “Cassandra, I will write to you.  I can’t decide just now.  I am awfully obliged to you; I can’t express what I feel.  You are good; you are very, very good.”

Ruth caught one of Cassandra’s hands and raised it to her lips.

“You are very good,” she said again.

Meanwhile Kathleen O’Hara, after walking a very short way with Susy Hopkins, gave her an abrupt good-bye and started running in the direction of the Tennants’ house.  She did not care a bit for Susy; but being a member of the Wild Irish Girls, and not only a member, but one of the Cabinet, she must on all occasions be kind to her.  Nevertheless a commonplace little girl like Susy Hopkins had not one thing in common with Kathleen.

“Everything is going splendidly,” she said to herself.  “No fear now that I shall not have plenty of excitement in the coming by-and-by.  I mean to write to father and ask him whether I may not invite some of the members of the Cabinet to Carrigrohane.  Wouldn’t they enjoy it?  Kate Rourke, of course, must come; and dear little Ruth Craven.  How pale and sweet Ruth looked to-day!  She is far and away the nicest girl in the school.  I am so glad I have taken steps to prevent that horrid friendship with Cassandra coming to anything!  Ruth mustn’t love anybody in the school very, very much except me.  Oh, things are going well, and Alice little guesses what she is driving me to by her extraordinary behavior.”

Kathleen entered the house, banging the door loudly after her, as was her fashion.

Another little girl had also reached home, but she did not bang the door.  She entered her mother’s shop to encounter the flushed and much-perturbed face of her parent.

“Well, Susy,” said Mrs. Hopkins, “I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

“Why, what is it, mother?”

“There’s nineteen-and-sixpence taken out of the till,” said Mrs. Hopkins.  “Some one must have come into the shop, for the accounts are nineteen-and-sixpence short.  When I left the house yesterday there were three pounds in the till—­three pounds and fivepence-halfpenny.  You sold, according to your own showing, a penn’orth of paper, which makes an extra penny; but when I went into the accounts this morning I found that the whole amount was only two pounds one shilling and a halfpenny.  Nineteen-and-sixpence is missing.  Susy, what does this mean?”

“I am sure, mother, I can’t tell you.  No one came into the shop; certainly no one stole the money.”