Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/137

Rh Even Miss Edith, kind as ever though she was, seemed to take a gloomy view of the case.

"I'm sorry, dear—very sorry!" she said, as she introduced Gipsy to her attic bedroom. "I don't like to have to turn you out of your dormitory—and I'm sure Miss Poppleton doesn't either! But, you see, we're obliged to put Leonora there—and there's no other place but this. If your father hadn't behaved so queerly, of course it would have been different. I'm very sorry, Gipsy—it's hard on a girl to be left like this. I wonder he could have the heart to do it. And it's hard on my sister too. She has to think of ways and means. Dear, dear! what an amount of trouble there is in the world! And you're young to have to begin to feel it. There! I've made you as comfortable as I can here, child. After all, you'll be downstairs most of your time."

When Miss Edith had gone away, Gipsy sat down on the one chair in her room, with a blank, wretched feeling that was beyond the relief of tears. It was not that she minded a camp bed in the least, and she had often slept in far rougher places than her new attic; but the change seemed the outward and visible sign of her forlorn circumstances. Both Miss Poppleton's uncompromising remarks and Miss Edith's well-meant sympathy hurt her equally, for both expressed the same doubt of her father's honour. Not until that afternoon had Gipsy thoroughly realized how utterly alone she was in the world. Every other girl in the school had home and parents and relations, while she had nobody at all except a father who had—no, not