at Seaton.  Now especially, since Miss Beach’s recent ill-health, the secret weighed heavily upon her.  She felt her aunt ought to know that the will was destroyed, so that she might take the opportunity of making another.  More than once she tried indirectly to refer to the subject, but it was a tender topic, and at the least hint Miss Beach’s face would stiffen and her voice harden; the old barrier between them would rise up again wider than ever, and impossible to be spanned.  Winona would have been glad to do much for her aunt, but Miss Beach did not care to be treated as an invalid.  Like many energetic people, she refused to acknowledge that she was ill, and the acceptance of little services seemed to her a confession of her own weakness.  It is rather hard to have your kindly meant efforts repulsed, so Winona, finding that her offers of sympathy met with no response, drew back into her shell, and the two continued to live as before, on terms of friendship but never of intimacy.  After almost two years spent in the same house Winona knew her aunt little better than on the day of her arrival.  They had certain common grounds for conversation, but their mutual reserve was maintained, and as regarded each other’s real thoughts they remained “strangers yet.”

Miss Beach, however, took an interest in Winona’s doings at school.  She read her monthly reports, and scolded her if her work had fallen below standard.  She expressed a guarded pleasure over successful matches, but rubbed in the moral that games must not usurp her attention to the detriment of her form subjects.

“You came here to learn something more than hockey!” she would remind Winona.  “It’s a splendid exercise, but I’m afraid it won’t prove a career!  I should like to see a better record for Latin and Chemistry; they might very well have more attention!”

Winona had tried to persuade her aunt to come and watch one of the matches, but Miss Beach had always found some engagement; she was concerned in so many of the city’s activities that her time was generally carefully mapped out weeks beforehand.  She consented, however, to accept Miss Bishop’s invitation to the Gymnasium Display, which was to be given at the High School at the close of the Easter term.

This was a very important occasion in the estimation of the girls.  It was their first athletic show since the advent of Miss Barbour, the Swedish drill mistress.  Governors and parents were to be present, and the excellence of the performance must justify the large amount which had been spent upon gymnastic apparatus during the past year.