Page 85 - An Australian Lassie

CHAPTER XX

THE DAY AFTER SCHOOL

A great day had dawned for Dorothea Bruce, a day long dreamed of and alas, long dreaded!

The first day after school life!

She would joyfully have taken another two years of school-days, with their sober joys and sweet intimate
friendships; their griefs and small quarrellings; their lessons and their play hours; their meetings and their
breakings up.

But yesterday she had "broken up" for ever. Yesterday she had mournfully given eight locks of her beautiful
hair away as "keepsakes," although it must be owned to-day she had examined her hair carefully, looking over
her shoulder to see how it bore the loss of its tendrils.

Yesterday she had wept separately with each of her "intimate" friends, excepting only Alma Montague, at this
dreadful parting that had come about.

Alma was not to lose Dorothea at all, instead she was to have her all to herself at Katoomba for the holidays,
and her queer little yellow face wore a superior smile as she saw the other girls' sorrow at parting from their
"darling Thea."

Many things were promised and vowed in this touching season. The little band of intimates were to write to
each other every week; still to tell each other every single secret; to think of each other every night; to be each
other's bridesmaids as long as there were maids to go round, and to visit each other in their married homes.

For of course they were all going to be married--every one of them.

Tt was Nellie Harden who had first alluded to the time "When T am married," "When you are married," etc.
She said she was rather curious to see who would be married first, and even plain little Alma felt cheerful in
looking forward to the time when she would be engaged. They simply took it for granted that in the great
beautiful world into which they were going there were lovers--lovers in plenty; lovers who vowed beautiful
vows, and performed gallant deeds, and wore immaculate clothing, and still more immaculate moustaches.

Dorothea had decided to be "elder sister" to the best of her ability. She intensely admired the beautiful elder
sister in The Mother of Eight, a book Mona had just lent to her.

The mother of eight was a girl of eighteen, who had promised her mother on her death-bed to be a mother to
all the little ones. Lovers had come to her, imploring her to "make their lives," friends had put in their claims,
pleasures had beckoned; but the mother of eight had shaken her beautiful head and stood there at her post until
the eight were married and settled in homes of their own, when the "mother" had suddenly died of a broken
heart.

This book formed the basis of Dorothea's day-dreams. She, too, was going to be an "elder sister" and reform
the home. Tn the flights of her imagination she saw herself making Betty and Nancy new frocks, mending
Cyril's trousers, trimming her mother's hats, correcting her father's manuscripts.

Wherever she looked she seemed to be wanted. A great place gaped in the household, and it was for the elder
sister to step in and fill it. And Betty, wild madcap Betty, would want talking to, and training and putting into
the way in which she should go. And, of course, lovers would come for Dot, but until Baby was well started in
life she would have none of them. And when she married, "a few silver threads would be discernible in her