The mistiness of tears clouded Bessie’s eyes when her mother, without preamble, announced the purport of the letter in her hand.

“It has come at last, Bessie, the recall that I have kept you in mind was sure to come sooner or later; not that we shall be any the less grieved to lose you, dear.  Father will miss his clever little Bessie sadly,”—­here the kind mother paused for emotion, and Bessie, athirst to know all, asked if she might read the letter.

The letter was not written for her reading, and Mrs. Carnegie hesitated; but Bessie’s promptitude overruled her doubt in a manner not unusual with them.  She took possession of the document, and sat down in the deep window-seat to study it; and she had read but a little way when there appeared signs in her face that it did not please her.  Her mother knew these signs well; the stubborn set of the lips, the resolute depression of the level brows, much darker than her hair, the angry sparkle of her eyes, which never did sparkle but when her temper was ready to flash out in impetuous speech.  Mrs. Carnegie spoke to forewarn her against rash declarations.

“It is of no use to say you won’t, Bessie, for you must.  Your father said, before he went out, that we have no choice but to let you go.”

Bessie did not condescend to any rejoinder yet.  She was reading over again some passage of the letter by which she felt herself peculiarly affronted.  She continued to the end of it, and it was perhaps lucky that her tenderness had then so far prevailed over her wrath that she could only give way to tears of self-pity, instead of voice to the defiant words that had trembled on her tongue a minute ago.

“I did hope, dear, that you would not take it so much to heart,” said her mother, comforting her.  “But it is mortifying to think of being sent to school.  What a pity we have let time go on till you are fifteen, and can neither speak a word of French nor play a note on the piano!”

Bessie had so often heard Mr. Carnegie’s opinion of these accomplishments that her mother’s regrets wore a comic aspect to her mind, and between laughing and crying she protested that she did not care, she should not try to improve to please them—­meaning her Woldshire kinsfolk mentioned in the lawyer’s letter.

“You have good common-sense, Bessie, and I am sure you will use it,” said her mother with persuasive gravity.  “If you show off with your tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly brought up.  You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going amongst strangers.  I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse.”