Miss Ailie was very humble-minded, and her entries under THE TEACHER TAUGHT were all admonitions for herself.  Thus she chided herself for cowardice because “Delicate private reasons have made me avoid all mention of India in the geography classes.  Kitty says quite calmly that this is fair neither to our pupils nor to I——­ M——.  The courage of Kitty in this matter is a constant rebuke to me.”  Except on a few occasions Mr. McLean found that he was always referred to as I——­ M——.

Quite early in the volume Miss Ailie knew that her sister’s hold on life was loosening.  “How bright the world suddenly seems,” Mr. McLean read, “when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one loves.”  Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe for beef-tea?  “It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I dined on the beef it was made from.”  Other entries showed too plainly that Miss Ailie stinted herself of food to provide delicacies for Miss Kitty.  No doubt her expenses were alarming her when she wrote this:  “An interesting article in the Mentor says that nearly all of us eat and drink too much.  Were we to mortify our stomachs we should be healthier animals and more capable of sustained thought.  The word animal in this connection is coarse, but the article is most impressive, and a crushing reply to Dr. McQueen’s assertion that the editor drinks.  In the school-room I have frequently found my thoughts of late wandering from classwork, and I hastily ascribed it to sitting up during the night with Kitty or to my habit of listening lest she should be calling for me.  Probably I had over-eaten, and I must mortify the stomach.  A glass of hot water with half a spoonful of sugar in it is highly recommended as a light supper.”

“How long ago it may seem since yesterday!” Do you need to be told on what dark day Miss Ailie discovered that?  “I used to pray that I should be taken first, but I was both impious and selfish, for how could fragile Kitty have fought on alone?”

In time happiness again returned to Miss Ailie; of all our friends it is the one most reluctant to leave us on this side of the grave.  It came at first disguised, in the form of duties, old and new; and stealthily, when Miss Ailie was not looking, it mixed with the small worries and joys that had been events while Miss Kitty lived, and these it converted once more into events, where Miss Ailie found it lurking, and at first she would not take it back to her heart, but it crept in without her knowing.  And still there were I——­ M——­’s letters.  “They are all I have to look forward to,” she wrote in self-defence.  “I shall never write to I——­ M——­ again,” was another entry, but Mr. McLean found on the same page, “I have written to I——­ M——­, but do not intend posting it,” and beneath that was, “God forgive me, I have posted it.”

The troubles with arithmetic were becoming more terrible.  “I am never really sure about the decimals,” she wrote.