A GIRL
A GIRL GRADUATE
A 522595
GRADUATE
WOOLLEY
628
1913.
HOUGHTON
MIFFLIN-X.CO
CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY

1
t
1
ARTES
1837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
TUEBOR
CRIS PENINSULAM AMŒNAM”
IRCUMSPICE
THE GIFT OF
Sheehan Bk.
•
:
828
W9139

By Celia P. Woolley.
ROGER HUNT. A Novel. 16m0, $1.25.
RACHEL ARMSTRONG; OR, LOVE AND THE-
OLOGY. A Novel. 12mo, $1.50; paper covers,
50 cents.
A GIRL GRADUATE. A Novel. 12m0, $1.50.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
BOSTON and New York.
1
•
1
A GIRL GRADUATE

A GIRL GRADUATE
BY
CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY
AUTHOR OF "RACHEL ARMSTRONG; OR, LOVE AND THEOLOGY," ETC
IndD NE
bien ou
war
The Riverside Dress
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1889,
BY CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
(
1.
317695
029 JW 185-6
ΤΟ
My Father and Mother,
WHOSE LIVES OF FAITHFUL DEVOTION TO THE GOOD
ARE A CONSTANT PRIZED EXAMPLE TO
THEIR LOVING DAUGHTER.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS
II. YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS
PAGE
11
22
III.
DRESS REHEARSAL
36
•
IV.
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA
•
57
V.
A SUMMER SHOWER
75
VI. THE RE-ACTION
97
VII. AN EVENING DRIVE
113
VIII. AN IMPETUOUS LOVER
133
•
IX.
A FAREWELL VISIT
X.
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION
144
167
XI. Two WOMEN
XII. A RUDE SURPRISE
189
203
XIII.
SOME STEPS RETRACED
218
•
XIV.
PROGRESSING EVENTS
234
XV. THE EMERSON CLUB
254
XVI.
GROWING HORIZONS
274
XVII.
PASSING EVENTS
292
XIX. THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE
XX.
XXI.
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
XVIII. JOYS AND TRIALS
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION
316
333
354
•
382
XXII. AT THE WORKS
XXIII. A BETTER UNDERSTANDING
XXIV. A SHOWER OF RICE
398
418
444
9
A GIRL GRADUATE.
CHAPTER I.
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS.
THE afternoon session of the Litchfield High
School closed at two o'clock, but the members of the
graduating class had been detained for a final re-
hearsal of the next day's closing exercises, and it
was after four when seven or eight young women
came trooping down the front steps, talking and
laughing. They walked a short distance together, in
groups of twos and threes, until they reached a cor-
ner where their paths diverged and where they
stopped for a few parting words.
66
Maggie will have the best essay, of course," said
Fanny Brown, with gay unconcern, "but I don't
care; I know three people who are going to bring
bouquets for me.'
66
Oh, dear," exclaimed Maggie, in mock distress,
"and I haven't ordered one. I wonder if it's too late
to go round to the conservatory now," glancing up at
the town clock on the schoolhouse tower.
"Never mind, Maggie," said another, in a soothing
tone, “Sidney Gale will attend to that.”
•.
11
12
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Maggie flushed, and tossed her head, casting a quick,
covert look in the direction of another girl who had
not spoken; a dark-eyed young woman who seemed
to hold herself a little aloof from her companions,
standing on the edge of the group with a hesitating
air, as if equally unwilling to go or to remain. She
made a sudden movement as if to separate from the
others, then, as if remembering herself, turned back and
remained where she was. There was a short, embar-
rassed pause, to cover which two or three of the girls
began an eager discussion of their plans for the fol-
lowing day, their new dresses, the prospect of fair
weather, etc.
"We haven't decided whether we shall wear white
slippers," said one.
66
Why, yes, we have," another replied, with a posi-
tive air. "Of course, we shall wear them; I bought
mine yesterday."
This was Dora Briggs, daughter of a wealthy
dealer in eggs and poultry. She had a large, over-
grown look, with bold black eyes, and was showily
dressed.
"What do you think, Maggie?" the first asked.
Maggie hesitated and seemed a little embarrassed,
though she tried to look indifferent as she answered
that she should not wear white slippers.
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Miss Briggs, "that just
spoils everything. We ought to dress alike. Don't
you think so, Laura?" addressing the dark-eyed girl.
"That is what Miss Bancroft wishes," the latter
replied, rather stiffly. "She said we were to make
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS.
13
no invidious distinctions; but if there is any one who
cannot afford white slippers-
"Miss Danvers will agree to supply them," Maggie
broke in, with an excited laugh. "What a pity we
are not all in the wholesale leather trade."
An angry color surged over Laura Danvers' face,
and she bent a displeased look on Maggie, whose blue
eyes sparkled with a dangerous light as she stood
there flushed and trembling. Glances of mingled
amusement and dismay were exchanged between the
other members of the group, which broke up now,
Laura Danvers going alone down Lombard Street,
the fashionable thoroughfare of the town, the others
taking an opposite direction, all but Maggie and her
friend Bertha Fay, who went directly ahead.
Laura Danvers had not meant to be rude, but she
had a fatal directness of speech, born partly of honesty,
but springing more from an inward restraint that knew
not how to employ tactful expression for itself. It was
no unusual thing for her to be by herself. Her cold,
rather distrustful disposition kept her from entering
readily into those intimate relations which girls of
her age cultivate. There was a large fund of self-
reliance in the girl's nature, which prevented her
from feeling too deeply the loss thus incurred, at the
same time that it caused her to hold herself aloof
from those whose companionship she would have
prized, but knew not how to win. She was not so
sufficient to herself, however, as not to long at times
for a near friend, one she could call her very own,
who should stand to her in the same relation of
14
A GIRL GRADUATE.
close admiring affection that Bertha Fay did towards
Maggie Dean, an affection won, not through acci-
dental circumstance, but solely for her own worth
and merit. It was a sore trial to her, at times, to
witness her classmate's popularity, not so much be-
cause she was jealous as because it made her own
loneliness the more apparent.
Wherever she went, Maggie seemed to make a new
centre for herself. Her schoolmates clustered about
her desk at recess, made her chief guide and spokes-
man in all their plans, looked up to watch and smile
at her if she crossed the room, quoted her sayings,
and copied her way of doing her hair. Laura Dan-
vers received many attentions also, but she instinctively
felt they were offered in a different spirit. She was
studious, and held a commanding social position among
her acquaintances, which secured her general esteem;
but all this was nothing compared to the spontaneous
love and admiration Maggie Dean had power to win.
What was the secret of her influence? Laura Danvers
often asked herself. Was it to be found in her men-
tal qualities? But Laura was a better scholar than
Maggie, since the latter had the habit of studying
only when she felt like it. Her quick eye would dart
down the page and seize its meaning at a glance,
though she often forgot it as easily, while her com-
panion, who worked harder for what she got, retained
it longer. Yet Maggie could remember things, too,
when she liked and it seemed worth while, and had a
reputation for intellectual brilliancy that took the
place of more solid attainments. Maggie's popularity
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS.
15
did not lie in a mere quality of the head, nor was it
because she was, in the pietistic sense of the word,
"good." On the contrary, she had many faults
which her best friends were obliged to admit, and
which Maggie also seemed to recognize without taking
pains to cure. Was it because of her apparent un-
consciousness, that seeming absence of all intention
or desire to outshine any one else? Certainly if it is
an art to be a favorite, and yet never betray by the
faintest flicker of an eyelid gratified consciousness of
the same, Maggie had attained that art. She never
took advantage of her position. Nobody called her
vain or self-seeking, nor would Laura Danvers per-
mit herself to do so. Until lately, her feeling about
Maggie had lain half dormant, being but part of a
growing perplexity and discontent with herself. It
was not until the association of Maggie's name with
that of her cousin, Sidney Gale, that this feeling had
taken more tangible shape, and become one of per-
sonal dread and distrust.
"That was very rude in you, Maggie," said Bertha,
after they had gone on a few steps, "to refer to her
father's business in that way." Bertha Fay was a
kindly and sensible-faced girl, and the valedictorian
of the class.
"Not half as rude as she was to me," the other
quickly rejoined. "Invidious distinctions' indeed!"
"Perhaps not," was the quiet reply, "but such
things do no good, and are undignified besides. I
have heard my mother say that a sharp tongue is like
a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways."
16
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Oh, it's perfectly true," groaned Maggie. "I
think sometimes I should like to tear mine out. But
what would you have me do?" turning impetuously
to her companion, "keep still and let Laura Danvers
say all manner of insulting things to me?"
"If you had not answered her, she would have
been ashamed of herself. As it is, you have made
her dislike you more than ever.
""
"Why should she dislike me?" Maggie cried. "I
am as good as she, and have as good manners, though
mercy knows that is saying little for either one of us.
It is because my father is poor, and — and a working-
man."
66
No, Maggie, that is not all," Bertha replied. "My
father is poor too."
"Oh, but he is the minister."
"There's another reason," Bertha went on; "she is
jealous."
Maggie lifted her eyebrows, and tried to look as if
she did not understand; but her eyes fell before the
clear, direct gaze of her companion.
"Why do you let Sidney Gale walk home with you
every night from school?" Bertha continued, reprov-
ingly.
66
Every night!" Maggie repeated, in pretended as-
tonishment. Then, in a lighter tone, "I didn't know
that Sidney Gale was Laura Danvers' property."
"They are engaged to be married."
"I'm not so sure of that," Maggie replied. She
spoke with the air of one who could impart weighty
secrets on some subjects if she chose.
I
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS.
17
"It amounts to the same thing.
Their fathers were
partners; Mr. Danvers has helped his nephew a great
deal. Mrs. Danvers talks as if it were all settled;
he visits her regularly, and "—
"Who visits whom regularly?" Maggie interposed,
mischievously. "Mind your pronouns, my dear."
"You know what I mean," Bertha replied, smiling
a little, but refusing to leave her ground. "Besides,
-now, you'll not be angry with me, Maggie, if I
speak plainly," dropping her voice to a more serious
tone, and taking her friend's arm.
"I couldn't be angry with you if I tried," the other
answered, affectionately. Nevertheless, her manner
betrayed a little nervous apprehension.
"It is only this, Maggie. If-if Mr. Gale wants
to walk home with you, why doesn't he come to the
schoolhouse, as he does to meet his cousin sometimes,
and not wait to join you on some back street?"
"Bertha Fay, I'll never speak to you again as long
as I live," Maggie exclaimed, withdrawing herself
from her friend, her face ablaze with indignation and
wounded pride.
“I was afraid you would be angry," Bertha said,
but not seeming in the least alarmed by the threat
she had heard.
"Just because a young man happens to overtake
a girl once or twice," Maggie began again, in a voice
that threatened to give way at every word, "when he
has — has business that way, people must talk like
that. And to think that you too, Bertha" - here
her breath came faster and her features began to work
18
A GIRL GRADUATE.
convulsively. “I never would have believed it,
never!" and she broke down in a fit of hysterical
crying.
"Hush, Maggie, I didn't mean that. I only
wanted to warn you. Do hush, Maggie; some one
will see us."
This last appeal had its effect, and Maggie, her
breast still heaving, began slowly drying her eyes,
sobbing out, in a grieved, helpless tone, that she had
never heard of anything so unjust and untrue in her
life, and that she hadn't a friend in the world.
"Now, Maggie, you know that isn't true," Bertha
answered, in her straightforward fashion. "Every-
body likes and admires you, and you know there isn't
a girl in town I love so well.”
"But you don't re-respect me," Maggie replied,
in a childish tone, that made the other smile.
"I do respect you, and that is why I want you to
appear always at your best and stop flirting with an
engaged man.
“You don't know that he is engaged," Maggie said,
with a return of her old manner.
"Everybody says so."
"That's nothing. Everybody says some other
people are engaged too."
"You mean yourself and Henry Parsons?" Bertha
asked, quickly. "Is it true, Maggie?" bending
round to catch her friend's eye, which was obstinately
fixed on the distant horizon. "I am so glad if it is.
Papa and mamma like him so much. He is a model
young man, I should think.”
་
1
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS.
19
A pleased light shone in Maggie's eyes, but she
still held them apart from her companion's.
"Model young men are apt to be tiresome," she
said, lightly.
Oh, for shame, Maggie; when he has always
worked so hard and done everything for himself,
with no bad habits either. Such a young man is
worth a dozen Sidney Gales."
Maggie was just sensible enough of the justice of
this rebuke to feel irritated by it.
"If you think so highly of him, why don't you set
your cap for him yourself?" Bertha looked dis-
pleased.
"There, now," exclaimed the other, in quick
remorse. "What makes me say coarse, silly things
like that, I wonder? I believe there are two people
inside me. One is a hateful little imp, always making
me do something wrong or foolish. That's my true
self, I'm afraid," with a rueful smile. "The other's
an angel; that's you," taking her friend's arm and
squeezing it penitentially against her side. "It is
true, Bertha," more seriously. "You are my walk-
ing conscience. I would give anything to be the
same quiet, dignified, every-day-alike kind of girl you
are," ending with a sigh.
"Well, if people were all alike, the world would
be a dull place," was Bertha's practical reply. "It is
just because you are so bright and quick, so different
every way from me, that I like you-only I can't
bear to see
""
“There, there,” Maggie interrupted, raising her
20
A GIRL GRADUATE.
hand to check this return to a disagreeable subject.
"Don't say another word. I'll do anything you
ask."
They had reached the corner, where they said their
good-byes and separated. Each had gone on but a few
steps when Bertha turned and called her friend, and
they slowly retraced their way towards each other.
"It's only about those slippers," she explained,
apologetically. "I have a pair that I've outgrown ;
I'm getting to be such a monster-" shrugging her
plump shoulders, "and if you can wear them”
"It's not that," said Maggie, quickly, but with no
hint of resentment. "I could have the slippers if I
said so, but Sister Helen has made such a fuss about
them. She says graduation day is getting to be
nothing but a season of display; that the girls care
only about their new dresses."
"Mamma says about the same thing. She didn't
quite approve of the slippers, either; but she says I
had better wear them if the rest do."
"Now, that isn't like Helen at all," said Maggie.
"She would say that if the others wore them, that
was a good reason why I shouldn't. She thinks I
ought to stand up for the principle, but it is pretty
hard standing up for a principle when
66
"When it isn't yours," the other finished, with a
laugh. "Well, I don't believe it will make any
difference. People are not coming there to look at
our shoes."
"Oh, yes, they are," Maggie said, with hardened
conviction. "What do you suppose they are coming
SCHOOLGIRL TALK AND MANNERS.
21
for-to listen to our essays? Well, to yours per-
haps—but mine is nothing but a string of nonsense.
I don't see how you ever did it, Bertha. Ten pages
of blank verse. It would have killed me."
"Oh, I didn't find it so hard. It wasn't as if I
had had to make it rhyme, and papa helped me, you
know."
"I guess he didn't help you much," the other
rejoined, bending forward and kissing her. "You're
too honest for that. Good-bye." And they again
parted.
Bertha Fay had only a few steps further to go
before she reached the rectory. She was a young
woman of quiet tastes and unstriking appearance,
whose unadventurous spirit was likely to reap neither
the gains nor penalties of a restless disposition like
her friend's; and which might in time, assisted by
certain physical tendencies, settle into moral lassi-
tude. Though Maggie had called Bertha her “walk-
ing conscience," it was chiefly in recognition of that
nicer sense of propriety in which she had been bred,
and which Maggie would have liked the credit of
possessing also. Neither of these young women had
yet encountered any task or duty requiring the severe
application of principle and a study of human motive,
and the character of each was still under the shaping
hand of circumstance.
་
..
CHAPTER II.
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
MAGGIE turned the corner and walked rapidly on
her way.
Her home was half a mile distant on a side
street that ran through the village across the railroad
tracks into the rich farming region beyond. It was
a small frame house standing on a slight elevation
just above the banks of the "Race," a narrow stream,
running parallel to the railroad, built in the early
settlement of the town to afford motive power to
two or three flouring mills.
When Maggie spoke of her father as poor, it was in
a relative sense. Thomas Dean had worked on the
road as engineer several years, and was now foreman
of the locomotive works located in the village. An
intelligent machinist and a man of sober, industrious
habits, he had been able, aided by the management of
a capable wife, to save enough from his earnings to
buy a home and lay up a few hundred dollars in the
bank. When she was a child, her father's shop had
been to Maggie a place of marvellous interest and
delight; and many a runaway visit had she paid to it,
to watch the big bellows, and fill her white apron with
all manner of curious things, bits of sooty iron and
shining black cinders, returning home covered with
22
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
23
grime and coal-dust, to be punished with a swift un-
dressing and putting to bed.
Mrs. Dean, though she had married a man who was
never free from it, abhorred dirt. An immaculate
cleanliness reigned in her house from cellar to attic,
suggesting the constant use of the scrubbing brush;
yet there was nothing of the household drudge in
Mrs. Dean's appearance. On the contrary, she wore
the complacent air of one whose tasks are all per-
formed and who has earned the leisure she enjoys.
Less efficient housekeepers were apt to observe that
Mrs. Dean's work seemed always done, no matter
what time of the day or week you happened in there.
There was never any hurry or bustle, any slipshod
shoving of one day's tasks into the next. One Mon-
day was exactly like another, with the clothes on the
line at half past ten, the kitchen floor still damp in spots
from the weekly mopping when Thomas Dean came
home to dinner, invariably served from the remains of
Sunday's roast. Mrs. Dean described these methods
with the word "system." She had brought up her
daughters to copy her ways in the smallest particu-
lars, but Maggie was beginning to evince a growing
restlessness under this discipline.
As she grew
towards young womanhood, she lost interest in the
railroad shops; and the huge volumes of smoke issu-
ing from the tall chimneys, together with the charred
roadway beneath, afflicted her with a sense of in-
jury and social ill-being every time she passed them.
Maggie was just eighteen, an age when a bright and
sensitive girl is quick to recognize whatever special
24
A GIRL GRADUATE.
disadvantages inhere in her position, and strong in
the belief in her power to overcome them. She was
one of that large and inevitable class in our American
civilization which illustrates both the merits and the
difficulties of our peculiar principles; where the spec-
tacle of social difference, based on divergent tastes
and standards, may be seen in the two generations of
a single household. The daughter of plain, unedu-
cated parents, themselves belonging to a definite
sphere, who with honest pride and ambition had fitted
their children to occupy a very different one, Maggie
felt herself at the same time both promised and
cheated of the things she most desired.
She had looked her situation in the face many times
and said to herself that, as the daughter of a working-
man who wore a cotton blouse six days out of the
seven, she had very little chance beside a girl like
Laura Danvers, the only daughter of the wealthiest
citizen in town; but she added that, as a girl with
ten times more brains than Laura Danvers, — that
was Maggie's moderate way of putting it, she had
a right to as fair a destiny as she. She had no feel
ing of special dislike towards Laura Danvers, who
rather stood in her mind as the representative of cer-
tain social lines and distinctions she proudly believed
herself able to overcome. It was not until lately,
since her acquaintance with Sidney Gale, that the
relation between the two young women had become
more personal.
Maggie had not tried to define her feelings towards
Sidney Gale, though she stood ready to admit, in
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
25
moments of serious reflection, that he was not to be
compared with a steady and intelligent young man
like Henry Parsons. But the persistent gravity
which marked the behavior and conversation of this
older acquaintance, together with the knowledge of
his real feeling for her, wearied and sometimes irri-
tated her, making the lighter image of young Gale,
with his gay, chatty talk and graceful gallantries,
appear in agreeable contrast. She had been unmis-
takably flattered by Gale's attentions. The knowl-
edge that she had the power to attract one so favored
and popular acted like a charm on her imagination,
arousing a host of daring hopes and speculations,
vaguely outlined but ardently cherished. Her friend
Bertha's words had rudely dashed these hopes to the
ground. Though dimly aware from the first of the
equivocal nature of her new admirer's attentions, she
would not before admit there was anything wrong or
unbecoming in them. Now, however, she suddenly
saw herself the object of that cheapened regard in
others which never smites so keenly as where it
reflects a shamed self-consciousness within. People
were laughing and speaking lightly of her, saying
that Sidney Gale was but amusing himself with her,
while he reserved all serious feeling for his cousin
Laura Danvers. Maggie was a proud, high-spirited
girl, and, though without social experience, too intel-
ligent not to understand the humiliating position in
which she had placed herself. Vanity and caprice
had combined to encourage a relation whose very
secrecy had at first contributed an additional charm,
26
A GIRL GRADUATE.
·
but which now threatened to cover her with reproach.
She walked rapidly down the street, her cheeks burn
ing with a sense of public exposure and shame, and
strong in a sudden resolve to have nothing more to do
with Sidney Gale.
On her way she had to pass a small, dilapidated
cottage, with a group of unkempt children playing in
front. It was the home of Pete Harmon, one of her
father's workmen, a rough and dissolute character.
A young woman about Maggie's age, poorly dressed,
but with touches of cheap finery about her, was lazily
swinging on the front gate. She looked at Maggie
with a cool and smiling assurance.
"You've kept him waiting a good while," she said,
in a drawling tone, with a hint of idle malice beneath.
Maggie flushed, and turned quickly towards her, a
sharp retort on her lips, then, bethinking herself, and
ashamed that she had let a girl like Molly Harmon
see she had power to annoy her, raised her head
proudly and went on her way. She could not dis-
miss this little incident from her mind, however, nor
cover her own sense of folly and wrong-doing with
angry contempt for another.
The hour was late, and she passed the place where
Sidney Gale usually joined her with a feeling of grate-
ful escape. This soon changed to humiliation as she
reflected that perhaps he had not been there at all,
but had purposely stayed away, and was now laugh-
ing at her with the rest of the world. She grew
very angry, and said to herself that if she were to
meet Mr. Gale that moment she would send him
1
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
27
So fully determined
promptly about his business.
was she in this, she began to regret he was not there,
that she might put her resolution into instant effect.
The next moment, fate showed itself ready for her
dealing in the shape of a good-looking young man,
smartly dressed in a new summer suit, who sprang
from the grass on the roadside, and came smilingly
towards her.
Maggie stopped short and gazed at him in undis-
guised dismay, mingled with a new, overpowering
dread.
"At last!" the young man exclaimed, as he drew
near. He turned back to accompany her, while
Maggie's steps fell into a slow, indecisive gait as she
struggled to collect herself, and regain the courage
that now seemed to exhale with every breath, and
ooze from her very finger-tips.
"What made you so late?" he went on, in an in-
jured tone. "I didn't know they kept the older
pupils after school. I've waited nearly two hours."
care.
These words sent a little thrill of gratified vanity
through his listener, despite her severe intentions.
He had waited for her, then,—perhaps he really did
But she meant not to give up her purpose, and,
making a desperate effort, without pausing to think
what she should say or how she should say it, she
struck out blindly, speaking in a voice in which
strong excitement and a strained formality were
curiously blended.
"Mr. Gale, I have something to say to you."
He turned an inquiring face towards her, at the
28
A GIRL GRADUATE.
same time extending his hand to relieve her of the
book she carried; but this she would not permit,
holding it pressed tightly against her, as if to keep
down the frightened beating of her heart.
"I'm all attention," he said, in his light, ironic
voice, as she continued silent. But now Maggie real-
ized, with a new sense of shame, that she could never
speak the words she had intended. What was there
to say to Sidney Gale, any way? How could she, by
forbidding him her society, reveal her distrust of him,
and her knowledge of the unpleasant gossip connected
with their names? After all, there was no real neces-
sity; for quickly the rescuing thought flashed across
her that this was the last day of school, the last after-
noon that she might be found at a given hour walking
down Taylor Street. This wavering purpose of our
little heroine should not be too swiftly condemned.
Maggie's instinct was better than her logic. Womanly
delicacy and honor will often choose to ignore pre-
sumptuousness in an admirer, rather than admit a
knowledge of the same by openly resenting it.
"It is nothing," she said, trying to speak in her
usual manner, "I have changed my mind."
He bent a curious look on her. "You changed it
pretty quick, but that's a woman's privilege. What
are you walking so fast for?"
She murmured something about being late, but, not
wishing to appear unusual, slackened her pace, while
her companion, making a second attempt to relieve
her of her book, was now passively permitted to take
it from her.
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
29
"And so we graduate to-morrow," he began again.
"What did you say the subject of your essay was?
What a pity Dean doesn't begin with a letter lower
down in the alphabet. Then I could come in late and
escape the bore of listening to all the rest."
“Our names are not arranged in alphabetical order,'
said Maggie, lifting her head.
"Mine comes near the
· end."
"Oh, then the arrangement is one of merit?"
"But I guess there are others you want to hear."
Maggie guessed a good deal, the art of finished dis-
course imparted in a three years' course in a village
high school being impaired by careless native habits.
"Laura Danvers' name is third on the programme,"
darting a significant look at the young man at her
side. If there was a touch of malice in this, it passed
unnoticed, Gale saying, only, in his most unconcerned
manner, that he supposed he might as well see the
thing through. He opened the book he was carrying,
and began carelessly turning the leaves, his eyes rest-
ing, in amused scrutiny, on one of the blank pages
covered with a schoolgirl's scribbled nonsense.
"This is the way young ladies employ their time
in school, is it?" and he read,
"A chance wind blew us together,
The same may blow us apart.'"
“Mr. Gale, give me that book." She snatched it
from him, while he laughed and yielded it. They had
now reached the end of the sidewalk, and he placed
his hand under her arm, in the free fashion of modern
30
A GIRL GRADUATE.
.
youth, to help her across the railroad track. By a
dexterous movement she freed herself from this sup-
port, walking silently by his side.
"Hullo, that's an interesting spectacle," he said, a
moment after. She looked in the direction indicated,
to a spot where two boys were fighting. The larger
had thrown his companion to the ground and was
mercilessly beating him with his clenched fists, while
the air was filled with childish sobs and oaths. Mag-
gie no sooner saw what was going on than she flew
to the rescue. By main force she seized and dragged
away the chief offender, sharply reprimanding him,
and bidding him take himself home. With a sulky
air he obeyed her, while she helped the other to rise,
brushing the dust from his clothes, and giving him
some wholesome advice, then sending him in the
opposite direction. Gale stood looking on at this
scene with an amused countenance.
"How can you laugh at a thing like that?" she
reproached him, as he came up to her. "I think it is
horrible to see boys fight. I wonder they don't kill
each other."
"That is their amiable intention, no doubt, but
they never get a fair chance. Some benevolent-
minded person is always rushing in and preventing
it. That is why the race of boys is destined never
to grow smaller. It was as good as a show to see
you with that young rascal. You are a whole moral
education society in yourself."
did
"If you think the race of boys is too large, why
you let yourself grow up?"
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
31
"I thought that was an easier way of diminishing
the species than getting killed. I hope you don't re-
gret the decision," dropping into a sentimental tone.
They had reached the bridge spanning the Race, and
again he put his hand on her arm. "Come and look
at the water," he said, and reluctantly she let herself
be led down the grassy slope.
""
"I wonder if I've forgotten how to skip stones.'
He picked up a pebble and sent it flying upstream,
where after a single ineffectual leap it plunged into
the water and sank ignominiously to the bottom.
Maggie greeted this exploit with a derisive laugh.
"I can do better than that myself."
"Then perhaps you'll be good enough to try,"
flinging himself down on the grass. She hesitated a
moment, then stooped, and, selecting the kind of
stone she wanted, bent lightly above the water's edge,
and sent it skimming over the surface, bending and
dipping in its flight like a bird.
"That's very well done. Somebody taught you, I
suppose."
66
Natürlich," she replied, lightly, practising her
three years' course in Ollendorf. "Henry Parsons
taught me," she added, a moment after.
It might
be as well, she reflected, to let Sidney Gale know
there were other young men in the world beside
himself.
66 Oh,” with an incommunicable accent. “I know
him. Nice young man one of the self-made sort;
poor but honest, and worships his Maker, I suppose,
like the rest of us."
32
A GIRL GRADUATE.
$
"He is my friend," Maggie interposed, with a flash
of resentment.
"So I've heard," in a significant tone.
"What have you heard?" she demanded, turning
quickly towards him, as he lay on the grass looking
up at her with saucy assurance.
"I have heard that you are engaged to him," was
the cool reply.
"It's not true. We're nothing but friends," but
Maggie had no sooner uttered these words than she
saw she had made an undignified mistake. Angry
with herself and her companion, she could not resist
the impulse to add another remark to the effect that
she wished people would mind their own business.
"But they won't, you know," was the lazy reply.
"Well, I'm not the only one that's talked about,"
with a retaliating glance. "People say Laura Dan-
vers is engaged.'
""
Yes, I've heard that too," the young man replied,
as he rose from the ground and brushed the dust
from his clothes. He assisted her up the bank, and
continued to walk by her side across the bridge up to
the house. He had never gone beyond the bridge
before, and, in spite of her discomposure, Maggie
could not help noting and making gratified comment
on this circumstance.
"What is the matter with you?" he asked, in an
aggrieved tone. “You have done nothing but quar-
It's our last day, too."
rel with me.
This remark was unfortunate, containing the im-
plication that, now these surreptitious meetings were
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
33
at an end, he should feel compelled to forego an
acquaintance he was not yet ready to seek openly.
"We shall survive the separation, I dare say," she
replied, with youthful sarcasm.
"You will survive. Girls are so heartless." He
continued to talk in a sentimental strain, of mingled
complaint and compliment, until they reached the
gate, Maggie listening with alternate feelings of dis-
pleasure and pride, and trying to persuade herself
that she had done him an injustice. He opened the
gate for her, but continued to linger outside.
66
'Why have you never invited me to come to see
you?" he asked, in an insinuating tone. Her face
flushed with a pleased surprise, at the same time that
she tried to look indifferent. "I dare say you have
asked a lot of other fellows," he went on, in pretended
pique. She gave a foolish little laugh at this, the as-
sumption that there were a lot of other fellows to ask
being not unpleasant.
"I can't ask you in to-night," she said. "It's sup-
per time, and I have too much to do.”
66
Very well, then, I will take that as an invitation
to come some other night, say next Thursday. That's
prayer-meeting night. Do you go?
Maggie was Episcopal bred, and said, no; but she
quickly remembered that Laura Danvers did, a
thought that served to check her hospitable impulses.
Just then she caught sight of her father coming down
the road, and, saying hurriedly, "I must go in now,"
she turned towards the house.
It was the apparent mixture of light and sincere
34
A GIRL GRADUATE.
feeling in Sidney Gale that attracted Maggie. The
easy grace of his manner pleased, while its occasional
familiarity offended her. His ready wit spurred an
answering quick intelligence on her part, which made
conversation a delightful exercise, like acting a
play. Maggie liked admiration, a pardonable fault
when one is eighteen; but, better than this, she liked
the knowledge that she had power to evoke admira-
tion, and the sense of mastery such knowledge brings.
Maggie was just at that age which rejoices most of all
in the bright independence of youth, when new realms
of conquest seem to lie on every hand, and the land-
scape of hope stretches all about us. She was im-
patient of all bonds that checked this feeling of
happy self-assurance, and felt herself able to make
wise use of the freedom she coveted.
She was
pleased with Gale's admiration, but would have been
frightened and a little displeased at the signs of any
deeper feeling, being at that point, in her young relish
of life, when she found sufficient pleasure in the tooth-
some quality of things, not having experienced that
hunger of the heart which craves a full feast. Her
acquaintance with Sidney Gale had proved the most
appetizing morsel she had yet tasted, but the knowl-
edge that he, too, was likely to be satisfied with the
same degree of enjoyment in their acquaintance im-
parted a bitter flavor to her own.
Gale walked rapidly back to the village, meeting
Maggie's father near the bridge. The two men were
unacquainted, though the younger knew that the
heavy, stooping figure, clad in its soiled working
YOUNG HEARTS AND HEADS.
35
dress, was that of Thomas Dean, machinist and prac-
tical engineer. The latter, walking along in his slow,
ruminative fashion, had not noticed a young man
standing at his gate, and bestowed only a casual
glance on Gale as he met him.
"To think of such a man being father to a girl like
Maggie Dean," Gale said to himself, as he went on
his way.
"A fellow would have to be badly hit to
take him for a father-in-law. It's an almighty shame.
She's the prettiest girl in town, and sharper than chain
lightning. Give her half a chance, and she would
set all the rest mad with envy.
What made her so
offish to-day, I wonder," he added, musingly. "Some-
body's been putting something into her head, perhaps."
He stroked his mustache with a complacent smile, and
then sighed. "Well, you can't expect one girl to
have everything," his thoughts ran on.
"If a girl
has money and good manners, a fellow can put up
with a little dulness." As he reached this sagacious
conclusion, he reached the sidewalk also, and, stamp-
ing his feet to remove the dust from his polished
boots, he shook himself free from disturbing thoughts,
and went on his way with a jaunty air.
1
CHAPTER III.
DRESS REHEARSAL.
"WELL, young lady, where have you been all this
time, and who do you suppose is going to finish this
dress, while you go traipsing about town? Here's
your father coming and the table not set."
This was the greeting Maggie received from her
mother, who sat sewing by one of the windows that
looked out on the porch. The tone was not as
severe as the words, and Maggie seemed little dis-
turbed, merely replying that she had been detained
after school to rehearse. She hung her hat on a nail
behind the door, then crossed the room and drew out a
small, fall-leaf table into the middle of the floor, which
she covered with a red table-cloth. Dinner hour with
the Deans was at twelve o'clock, and the evening
meal was a simple affair of cold meat, bread and
butter, and some kind of sauce. Maggie distributed
the plates round the table, then came over to her
mother's side, to examine the progress of her work.
"Did you have enough lace?" she asked.
6
"Yes, I had enough," was the sententious reply.
"I don't never want to see no more Valenseens edge,'
if that's what you call it. I'm thankful you don't have
to graduate but once."
'Well, mother, put it away now; I'll finish it after
36
DRESS REHEARSAL.
37
supper. But Mrs. Dean declared she might as well
go on now.
She would not, under any circumstances, have
trusted a stitch of the work into other hands, as
Maggie knew very well. She had ridiculed this
"graduatin' business," as she called it, from the
first, scolding Maggie for her extravagance, and com-
plaining loudly over the added labor it brought on
her, at the same time that she entered into it with her
customary zest and efficiency. The truth was, she
liked nothing better than an extra job of work, and
she had made the whole of Maggie's dress, with its
dozen flounces trimmed with lace, by hand. She
held sewing-machines in poor esteem, declaring that
they wasted the thread, and regarding them, together
with most modern improvements, as among the de-
vices to encourage the lazy and inefficient. This
conservative instinct ran through all Mrs. Dean's
house-keeping. She would have liked to cook her
meals at an open fire-place, with a bake-kettle, as her
mother had done before her; and stood conspicuous
among her village acquaintance for her refusal to use
a reservoir stove. "I always have het my dish water
in a kettle, and I guess it won't hurt me to do so now,'
was the answer she gave to her husband's mild sug-
gestion that perhaps she had better get one.
Mrs. Dean was still in her prime, with a trim
figure, clear skin, and decisive features. She was as
blunt in speech as independent in opinion, yet by no
means an ill-natured woman. She never took part
in the village gossip, the usual feminine resource in
38
A GIRL GRADUATE.
a small town, finding it more tiresome than exciting
to occupy herself in far-fetched conjectures on the
conduct of her neighbors. This indifference to the
affairs of other people was accompanied by a corre-
sponding security in regard to her own. The supposi-
tion that any one of her family could be talked about
or lay themselves liable to injurious suspicion never
crossed her mind. She knew that Sidney Gale, a
young man with whom none of the rest of the family
were acquainted, had walked home with Maggie
several times of late; but the knowledge had not
troubled her, nor even aroused her curiosity. Maggie
was young and pretty, and it was natural, she sup-
posed, that young men should like to be with her.
There were others besides Sidney Gale who had
walked home with her. As for marrying, Mrs. Dean
was not a woman who detected a possible son-in-law
in every masculine acquaintance. She supposed, in-
deed hoped, that Maggie would some day marry
Henry Parsons, but she had never urged her daughter
on the subject, shrewdly guessing that she might
hinder more than help the end she desired. As her
daughters grew in years, she withdrew herself more
and more from active superintendence of their affairs.
Like many women of her class, she possessed much
mental inertia along with her physical activity. The
material labor and care expended on her children,
when they were young, had been easy and pleasant
to her, but she had as little taste for as understand-
ing of deeper needs incurred in their growing years.
"I don't bother my girls with much advisin'," she
DRESS REHEARSAL.
39
said. "Let 'em take their own way, I say, and
they'll learn better all the quicker."
Maggie must have inherited her social ambitions
from a remote ancestry, for her mother had not a spark
of any such feeling, which could only have sprung
from acknowledged discontent with her present
condition. Mrs. Dean knew, of course, there were
women who lived differently from herself, wore finer
clothes, and had servants to wait on them; but it
never occurred to her that this difference redounded
to their credit or to her special disadvantage. Hers
was one of those narrow, egotistic natures, which is
supremely content with itself under all circum-
stances. If fate had assigned her a place among the
rich and cultured, she would have been scarcely more
conscious of her merits than she was now as the wife
of an industrious mechanic, who worked for weekly
wages. As a master of his trade and the boss work-
man of his shop, Mrs. Dean found enough in her
husband to satisfy the ambition of any reasonable
woman, especially when she compared him with some
of his associates, lazy, dissolute fellows, like Pete
Harmon, who spent all they earned and kept their
families on the verge of poverty. If she had had a
boy and she thanked her stars she had not, boys
tracked the house up so, and were so hard to manage
-she didn't know that she could have asked any-
thing better for him than to go into the shop as his
father had done. It was well enough to send the
girls to school. There didn't seem to be anything
else to do with them. School finished, she would
40
A GIRL GRADUATE.
have had them settle down quietly at home to help
her with the housework and do their own sewing, but
she had met a conflicting opinion on this point, in her
elder daughter, who had studied book-keeping, and
now held a position in the leading dry-goods store of
the town.
Helen Dean had inherited a will as strong as her
mother's, encased in a quiet exterior like her father's.
She was six years older than Maggie, and entered the
house while the latter was setting the table. Remov-
ing her hat and light wrap, she disclosed a taller
figure than Maggie's, with a hint of her father's
ruggedness in the firm-set shoulders, marked by the
further contrast of dark hair and eyes. Her face was
of grave expression, but had a look of intelligence
and good sense. She handed a small package to her
sister, a roll of satin ribbon, intended for the final
decoration of the latter's dress, and Maggie and her
mother were soon absorbed in its arrangement, loop-
ing and fastening it in place to try the effect.
Thomas Dean entered from the kitchen, where he
had stopped to wash himself and take off his blouse,
revealing a shirt of blue print beneath. He always
entered the house by the back door, an insignificant
circumstance perhaps, yet which reflected a good deal
of the man's nature. Though he was, essentially,
master of his own house Mrs. Dean would have
scorned the idea of being wife to any other kind of
man it was natural that one of his slow and unob-
trusive manner should seem a figure of secondary
importance beside his bustling wife. He seated him
DRESS REHEARSAL.
41
self at the table, and waited a few moments for the
others to take their places.
66
Maggie set the table, didn't she?" he asked, in a
patient tone.
66
Why, what's wanting?" that young lady de-
manded, wheeling about with a convicted look.
"Well, I gen❜ally eat with a knife," a statement
which conveyed the literal truth, as he seemed to
find no use for the brightly scoured, three-tined in-
strument Maggie laid down with its accompanying
blade of steel.
“And while you're about it, you might get some
bread," he added, in the same uncomplaining tone.
Maggie flushed, and bit her lip, retiring to the pantry,
whence she returned, bearing a plate heaped with
wide slices of the lightest and whitest article of its
kind.
“Well, she didn't forget the napkins," said Mrs.
Dean, as she took her place. "Maggie always puts
them on the first thing, but I never did think napkins
very good eatin' myself, even when they're fringed."
Oh, mother!" exclaimed Maggie, in petulant pro-
test against a kind of joking she was tired of.
66
Napkins were a comparatively new feature among
the table appointments at the Deans', where much
coaxing from Maggie had made a place for them.
Mrs. Dean held this, as every other innovation on
their established ways, in high scorn, but, now that
the change had been effected, she was beginning to
take a little secret pride in the regular appearance
of each napkin at its appropriate plate, though she
!
Į
42
A GIRL GRADUATE.
made a shamefaced use of her own. Maggie's, it is
needless to say, had become indispensable to her, and
the small, silver ring in which it was enclosed, a
birthday present from her sister, did much to impart
that element of mental content which hygienists tell
us is of dietary importance. A ring of plain ivory
sufficed her sister's needs, who used it in a natural
manner, as if she had always been used to it. So too
Maggie reflected with some discontent-she
would have gone without it, had circumstances re-
quired, as if she had always been used to that too.
Nothing seemed to make much difference to Helen,
who had a way of carrying herself above those little
things, which entered so largely into Maggie's scheme
of happiness.
Maggie held her sister in affectionate awe, loving
and trusting her more than any one else, at the same
time that she rebelled against her authority. In
spite of her inexperience, Maggie had her own fac-
ulty of shrewd judgment concerning the people she
met.
Helen might be a book-keeper in a store, who
wore plain prints in summer, and plainer cashmere in
winter, with a black silk for Sundays; yet it was
easy to see that there was no finer lady in town than
she, so nice and careful in all her habits, so dignified
in her manner, never doing foolish, irreparable things,
which made her cheeks burn to think of afterwards, as
she, Maggie, was always doing. It frightened Maggie
to think what Helen would say if she knew of her
walks with Sidney Gale, and she wondered what
special grace of Providence or chance had kept her
DRESS REHEARSAL.
43
mother's lips silent on the subject in her elder daugh-
ter's presence; but she said to herself that, as
long as her mother knew she was guilty of no real
concealment, adding that sisters were not bound to
tell each other everything any way. She knew that
Helen considered her as good as engaged to Henry
Parsons, Helen had such old-fashioned notions on
some subjects, but Maggie said to herself that she
knew best whether she was engaged or not, and
that she shouldn't marry Henry Parsons unless she
wanted to.
Thomas Dean ate his supper with an anxious and
preoccupied air, which only Helen noticed.
"Has anything gone wrong at the Works, father?"
she asked.
He sighed and pushed his chair back from the
table. "Pete Harmon's on another spree," he said.
Well, I must say, Mr. Dean," his wife exclaimed,
“that if I was foreman of them Works, I'd ship
Pete Harmon pretty quick." As this was an obser-
vation that Mrs. Dean made on an average six or
seven times a year, it did not produce any startling
effect.
"It would be hard for father to do that," said
Helen, in her quiet tone. "He has to think of the
family.'
""
“They're a poor, shiftless set," her mother replied.
"It was only yesterday his wife was in here to bor-
row some yeast. If I've lent her my rule for mak-
ing yeast once, I have fifty times. Yet she's always
buying baker's yeast. I don't know what you can
44
A GIRL GRADUATE.
expect of such people. Then, she sets here and cries
because Pete don't use her well, and she ain't got
but one calico dress. She says my girls are too stuck-
up to be seen with hers, and that it ain't their fault
they've got a drunken father."
"Well, I expect that's so," said Mr. Dean.
"I think she's very meddlesome and impertinent,"
said Maggie, "and I wish she'd keep away from
here." No one heeded this little outburst, and she
picked up a pile of plates and went into the kitchen.
"She was at the Works this afternoon, begging
me not to discharge Pete," Mr. Dean went on. "She
says they haven't had any potatoes in the house for
a week.”
"Well, they had some for supper to-night, I'll war-
rant," his wife observed, "and I guess you know
where she got the money to pay for them, Mr. Dean."
Her husband looked foolish. "I only give her half a
dollar," he said.
"I thought so," his discerning mate replied, in a
pitying tone. "Now, we've got a lot of potatoes in
the cellar-you always do lay in too large a supply
-they're all runnin' to sprouts, and it's time for the
new ones too. You'd much better told her to send
that big, lazy boy of hers round here to sprout them
on shares."
"I can do that to-morrow," said Mr. Dean, in a
cheerful tone, pleased at the unexpected opportunity
of doing another kindness, for there was still an
unrelieved burden on his mind. Mrs. Dean re-
peated her advice, that the sooner he got rid of the
DRESS REHEARSAL.
45
troublesome Pete the better. "I wonder you can
have it on your conscience, Mr. Dean, to encourage
such folks."
"I've ben thinking of that," her husband replied.
"I wouldn't promise to take Pete back. I told
her I was gettin' tired; 'n' so I be, I'm gettin' tired,"
with a long-drawn sigh. Besides, it ain't fair. I
tried to make her see that too, but I guess she didn't,
she cried so.”
"Oh, cried!" Mrs. Dean interrupted, with an im-
patient toss of her head.
"Now, there's George Martin out of work, and
he's a good honest man, never touched a drop, and
he's got a family to support too. Seems clear as
daylight George ought to have the place, yet, when I
think of Mary Harmon and the children, I ain't so
sure of it." He bent his head in a few moments'
troubled reflection.
"Of course, George ought to have the place," said
his wife. "You might as well pour water through a
sieve as try to help a man like Pete Harmon.”
"I don't know," her husband replied, doubtfully.
"Some folks seem put into this world just to give
other folks a chance to take care of 'em, to make us
patient and forbearin' like. They're just like babies,
trouble nor nothin' don't seem to teach 'em better.
They can't never walk on their own feet, so to speak.
We just have to pick 'em up and carry 'em along.
Pete Harmon's that kind."
"Then, you don't mean to discharge him and hire
George Martin?" Helen asked. She had put on her
46
A GIRL GRADUATE.
bonnet to return to the store, and stood waiting.
Maggie had come in from the kitchen and stood look-
ing at him also.
"Yes, I do," her father answered, with quiet re-
solve. ""Tain't fair to slight a man because he's de-
servin', in the hope he'll get his share some way.
'Twould be like refusin' to smell a flower because it's
got a sweeter scent than a turnip. I shall give
George Martin the place to-morrow," rising slowly
from his chair. "But we must find something else
for Pete to do. I guess I'll get him to help me in
the garden.
""
"Well, Thomas Dean, mark my words, there'll be
trouble come out of this," said his wife.
"Why, mother, you just said father ought to dis-
charge him,” Maggie reproved her.
"Don't make no difference," her father replied.
"When you know a thing's right, you've got to do it,
trouble or no trouble. If I was to spend my time.
thinkin' what's goin' to happen next week, I'd never
get anything done to-day; but we must take care of
Pete some way.' He sighed again, and went out
into the garden. Helen left the house at the same
time. Mrs. Dean put the last stitches in the dress,
while Maggie washed the dishes in a thoughtful mood.
It was not the first time that words like these had
raised a new feeling of wonder and respect for her
father. She said to herself that there was not a better
man in the world than he, not even the minister, yet
there were people who slighted and looked down on
him. A feeling of loving pride swelled in her heart,
DRESS REHEARSAL.
47
mingled with indignation. Along with these feelings
arose one of irritation over the implication in Mrs.
Harmon's talk that her family and the Deans were on
an equal footing, and that Maggie's natural compan-
ion was a rude and ignorant girl like Molly Harmon.
It did not allay Maggie's displeasure in reflections of
this kind that other people felt in the same way—
Laura Danvers, for instance; but she was at that age
when every obstacle to youthful happiness and ambi-
tion seems insignificant compared with the hopeful
belief in our own power to overcome the same.
Maggie meant to make her own future, to prove her-
self independent of accidental circumstances; and
to-morrow was graduation day, which she felt certain
would be signalized by some new triumph and proof
of her power to please and win what she desired.
Her work finished, she went into the parlor with
her mother to try on the dress. This was a long pro-
cess, but Maggie felt that its pains were amply
rewarded by the sight of the figure confronting her
in the little gilt mirror; its girlish slimness, freshly
tinted complexion, and sunny hair being admirably set
off by the folds of soft muslin that fell to her feet,
flowing backwards in an ample train. The satin
ribbon gleamed palely on its snowy background, and
the ripple of lace that completed the costume at neck
and elbows nestled lovingly against a skin as pure in
texture as itself.
"I don't know whether to wear gloves or not," said
Maggie, stretching forth a pretty hand and round
white arm, and turning them about, as she debated
48
A GIRL GRADUATE.
whether the stylish effect of a six-buttoned glove was
not likely to hide a greater charm.
"Oh, you'd better go the whole figger, now you've
begun," said her mother.
Just then Thomas Dean, entering the house, came
and stood in the doorway, his figure leaning heavily
against the casing as he surveyed with mild interest
the scene within.
"Won't you come in?" Maggie asked.
"Don't look as if I could get in," he answered, with
a touch of his wife's humor. Mrs. Dean snickered
audibly.
"I should think as much. "Tain't none of my
doin's, that ain't," pointing to the muslin train.
"Must have cost something, a dress like that," her
husband observed, in incurious comment, as if the fact
only remotely concerned him.
"It didn't cost ten dollars," Maggie hastened to
reply. "The ribbon is the most expensive thing
about it. The rest is only shilling muslin."
"Dreadful sleazy stuff, too," said her mother, taking
a piece between her thumb and finger to test its qual-
ity. "There'll be nothing but a string left when it's
washed."
" Of
"Who wants it washed?" said Maggie.
course, I shall only wear it to parties and such
places." She spoke with the air of one who already
had several engagements on hand, while her father
turned back into the other room, giving place to
his older daughter, who had returned from the
store. Entering the room, Helen seated herself, with
•
DRESS REHEARSAL.
49
a tired movement, on the nearest chair, drawing off
her gloves and looking at Maggie with a forbidding
expression.
"Don't you like it?" the other asked, rather
timidly.
"Have you thought how you are going to get to
the schoolhouse in a dress like that?" was the reply.
"Yes, that's what I should like to know," put in
Mrs. Dean.
"I should think I might have a carriage for once,'
said Maggie, crossly. "Of course, I can't walk
through the dust and over that dirty railroad track.”
"The hacks always charge double fare coming out
here," said Mrs. Dean.
"That's because we live so far away from every-
thing," said Maggie, with growing discontent. "I
don't see why we can't live in town, like other folks."
"You'd ought to told us before," her mother
answered. "We can't very well sell out and move
before mornin'." Mr. Dean, attracted by the sound
of their voices, came again and stood in the doorway.
"Here's Maggie thinks she ought to have a hack
to ride to the schoolhouse," his wife went on, in her
most sarcastic tone. "She'll be wantin' a striped can-
erpy next, and a piece of carpet to walk on."
Mr. Dean deliberated the subject a moment.
"Well, why not? Let her have the hack, if she
wants it.'
""
Mrs. Dean tossed her head as much as to say it was
no business of hers, while a look of thankful happi-
ness lighted up Maggie's face.
50
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Oh, thank you, father," she said, in as fervent a
tone as if he had bestowed some real benefit on her.
Her heart went out to him in a little gush of grati-
tude, and she recalled other occasions when he had
come to her assistance like this, giving his fatherly
sanction to some girlish wish or fancy which her
mother only ridiculed and her sister opposed. She
thought, with a little compunction, that she was not as
good to her father as she ought to be, who was always
good to her, though he passed days sometimes with-
out apparent notice of her. It was this little feeling
of contrition and wish to make amends that led her to
pause at his side on her way upstairs and say, "You're
coming to see me graduate to-morrow, father, aren't
you?" An abashed smile rose to his face, and he
made no reply.
"All the other girls' fathers will be there," Maggie
went on, with a slight pout.
"For land's sake, child, stop teasing your father.
Do you suppose he wants to lose half a day's work
just to see a lot of girls with long trains? He'd feel
like a fish out of water."
Thomas Dean colored at these words, and he re-
flected on this view of the subject a moment. "Well,
I'll see," he said, at last; "but I guess that your
mother's about right. I guess it ain't much of a
place for me." He looked down at his daughter with
an expression of mingled embarrassment and doubt.
It was hard to realize that this blooming young
woman, with her flowing draperies, easy manners,
and that wonderful range of book knowledge which
DRESS REHEARSAL.
51
was to receive its reward in a diploma, was his little
Maggie, who used to run to meet him on his way
home from the shop, and be lifted to his shoulder for
a ride. The change seemed to pain as well as puzzle
him, and he turned away with a troubled look on
his honest face, as of one who has lost something,
through no fault of his own, which he knows not
how to regain.
Maggie and her sister climbed the narrow stairway
to their room. The latter was simply furnished, and
with fewer ornaments than are usually found in girls'
rooms. Maggie took off her dress, and put it care
fully away in a spare room across the hall, then,
standing before the glass, with uncovered neck and
arms, began the important task of crimping her hair.
Helen, who wore her hair in its natural plainness,
yielded the whole of the dressing-bureau, and made
her preparations for the night on the other side of the
room.
"Aren't you going to-morrow, either?" Maggie
asked, in a complaining tone, as if her father's failure
to promise attendance had cast that of the entire
family in doubt.
"Of course," was the reply. "I shall take
mother."
"Why, can't she ride with me?" Maggie asked;
but, even as she spoke, she saw the scornful look
with which her mother would receive such a proposi-
tion.
"That will not be necessary. We are to call for
Miss Graham." There was nothing especially offen-
52
A GIRL GRADUATE.
¡
sive in these words, but something in the speaker's
tone and manner irritated Maggie.
reply to this, and
"I know you think it is very silly in me to have a
carriage at all.” There was no
Maggie's sense of injury increased.
trying partner in a quarrel than a silent one.
There is no more
"I suppose I can take my things to Bertha Fay's,
and dress there.”
"That is nonsense. You will dress at home, as you
should."
Maggie threw back the braid she had just finished,
with a spirited motion, not unlike a young colt's, who
sees a wiser way of managing himself than his owner
is trying.
"Then, of course, I shall have to ride."
"I have made no objection to your riding. One
piece of folly usually leads to another."
"You call it a piece of folly, I suppose, my having
a new dress with a few flounces on it. You would
like me to wear my old check silk." Again there
was silence in the little chamber.
"I'm sure I don't want a carriage," Maggie rushed
on, in a trembling voice. "I wish I had never seen
the dress. I wish I wasn't going to graduate. I hate
the whole thing—I—”
"Maggie!"
"It's true. I wish I had never been born, and it is
you who make me feel so. You make everything
harder for me." Here her voice broke in an angry
little sob.
“I make everything harder for you?" her sister
repeated, in surprise.
DRESS REHEARSAL.
53
"Just because I'm younger than you, and like
to have a good time, you think me silly and vain.
You want me to be dignified and indifferent, like
you; but I can't, and I don't want to. I can't help
liking things and wanting to be in them, and that is
what makes you look down on me and despise me.”
Maggie had given utterance to this impetuous out-
break in a series of interjectional phrases, choking
down her outraged feelings, which now gave way to
a burst of tears, in which all the disturbed emotions
of the day found vent. She threw herself on the bed,
and, burying her face on the pillow, cried for a few
moments without restraint, while her sister, with a
contrite and alarmed face, tried to quiet her.
66
Hush, Maggie, they will hear you downstairs."
"You are mistaken," she began again, as Maggie
grew a little calmer, "if you think I want to make
things harder for you. I only want you to act like
a sensible girl. If a thing is right, we should not
stop to ask whether it is hard or not;" but this was
a kind of stoicism Maggie felt unable to practise. It
seemed to her much more reasonable that, when a
thing is discovered to be hard, one should set to work
to see if it be really necessary. Maggie had all of
youth's distaste for basing its own action on the mel-
ancholy experience of other people, and preferred to
gain her own as she went along. There was no for-
mal peace-making between the two sisters, who always
preserved an undemonstrative manner towards each
other;
but Helen's next act had the effect to reinstate
herself in the other's good will. Waiting until Maggie
54
A GIRL GRADUATE.
had grown quiet and resumed her preparations for
the night, she handed her a paper package. "Miss
Graham sent you this," she said.
"Miss Graham!" Maggie exclaimed in surprise.
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" as, opening the parcel,
she found a white silk fan inside, edged with curling
feathers, and mounted on a carved ivory frame.
“Miss Graham, of all people in the world!" she
went on, bending over her treasure, and opening and
shutting it with the pleased look of a child.
can't think how she came to do it. It must be be-
cause I'm Helen's sister," smiling through her wet
eyelashes. "It's real ivory, isn't it," examining the
frame more minutely.
66 I
"It's real if Miss Graham had anything to do with
it. You must write a note and thank her."
"In my very best hand," Maggie replied, gayly,
"and I will put in something from Emerson, whom
she is continually quoting. Something about 'con-
sistency's being the hobgoblin of little minds.'
"I don't think I would do that," Helen answered,
doubtfully.
66
Why, of course not," Maggie made impatient
reply. She found her sister's literalness rather try-
ing at times.
""
"I don't think she means to be inconsistent
"Oh, she may be as inconsistent as she likes, if
this is the way she does it; and I did want a fan. I
don't care so much about the slippers," in generous
excuse of the opposition she had met on this point.
"The slippers," Helen repeated, with a little em
DRESS REHEARSAL.
56
barrassment. "Oh, yes, they're on the table," indicat
ing a white paper box on the table near by. Maggie
opened her eyes in the greatest astonishment, then,
with excited fingers, untied the string, and took out
a pair of white slippers. She said not a word, only
turned and looked at her sister. She was completely
bewildered.
"Mother thought you might as well have them,"
Helen explained, with a convicted air.
"Well!" Maggie drew a long breath. A sudden
scheme of magnanimous retaliation had occurred to
her, prompted by a compunctious feeling of not de-
serving all the goodness she was receiving, and of
having done everybody injustice.
66
"I shall not wear them," she said, heroically, re-
placing them in the box and shutting down the cover.
"Why not?"
"I don't care anything about them. At least, I
don't care so much about them, now that I know I
can have them." She laughed at this way of putting
it. “I mean I think just as you do they're silly."
This was not perfectly honest, perhaps, but, at least,
it was generous.
"But if all the other girls wear them," Helen said,
repeating an argument she had heard before.
"What do I care for that?" said Maggie, lifting
her head; and, indeed, at the present moment she
felt that she cared very little. A sudden desire to
show herself independent and above the trivial
motives that sometimes ruled her had seized her.
She no longer felt that she wanted to do everything
56
A GIRL GRADUATE.
..
as everybody else did, and the resolve grew stronger
to do something quite different.
"No, I shall not wear them," she repeated. "I
shall not let you go to that expense," she added, ex-
plainingly.
"Just as you please. It was not the expense I
thought of.”
“I know that,” Maggie answered, hastily, "but I
shall not wear them. Don't let's talk about it. But
I shall carry the fan," she added, returning to the
dressing-bureau, and taking up her new possession.
"Miss Graham is a dear. I will never laugh at her
or her blue crape shawl again."
CHAPTER IV.
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
GRADUATION day dawned as fair as the youthful
hopes of those who had so long watched its coming.
The class numbered some of the most popular young
people in town, and the occasion was one of gen-
eral festivity. At two o'clock the school hall was
crowded with an expectant audience, which kept up
a lively conversation in a subdued tone, while a hun-
dred gayly colored fans fluttered in the air, adding to
the general stir and excitement. The room was deco-
rated with flowering shrubs, and the class motto,
Fides et Patientia, in large lettering of arbor vitæ,
ornamented the plastered wall behind the teacher's
desk. The chairs on the right were occupied by the
members of the board and other distinguished visitors.
It was little past the appointed hour, and the audi-
ence was growing impatient, when the door of a
recitation room opened and Principal Marsh came
out, followed by the members of the class, the two
assistants bringing up the rear of the procession.
The class consisted of eight young women and two
young men. The young women were all in white,
and the black-coated figures of the young men stood
out in marked contrast against that mass of billowy
57
58
A GIRL GRADUATE.
turn came.
muslin. They wore a constrained and rather apolo-
getic air, as if aware of their comparative insignifi-
cance and the small share of public interest their pres-
ence created. The exercises were opened with prayer,
after which one of the amateur vocalists of the vil-
lage sang, "How so fair," using the Italian words;
the audience, though it did not understand a syllable,
listening in a state of high gratification at this exhi-
bition of native talent. The programme proper then
began with an oration by one of the young men,
whom the audience heard patiently, giving a round of
friendly applause at the close, then bending eagerly
forward to catch sight of the next comer. Interest
in the proceedings increased when Laura Danvers'
It had been at her own request that her
name appeared thus early on the programme, and not,
as Maggie had unjustly intimated, because of inferior
scholarship. It was characteristic of her to manifest
no desire to obtain any of the honors for which others
were eagerly striving. Her essay was short, but sen-
sible and well written. When she descended from
the platform her passage was blocked by two ushers
bearing a number of floral tributes in their arms, the
most conspicuous of which was a basket of roses, of
a large and expensive variety, with card attached
bearing the dashing signature of Sidney Gale. The
hour was late and the audience growing weary when
Maggie's turn came. She ascended the platform with
an assured step, and, after saluting the audience with
the profound courtesy she had spent an hour in prac-
tising the day before, took one slow look around the
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
59
room.
For she had made up her mind to accustom
herself to the situation before she began, not to be
frightened nor to scramble through her reading in
the breathless fashion of some of the others. As her
eyes wandered over the sea of faces, which, despite
her resolution, swam in a confused mass before her,
she singled out five from the rest. The first which
she recognized, with much surprise, was her father's.
He had been unable to remain away, and, exchanging
his work-day dress for his Sunday best, now stood
leaning against the wall at one end of the room, in an
awkward position, his eyes fastened on Maggie with
the same half proud, half timorous look of the even-
ing before. Turning her eyes from him, they fell
next on her mother and sister sitting in the rear of
the room, Mrs. Dean leaning back in her seat and
fanning herself with a complacent air, and Helen re-
garding her with an anxious look. The next instant,
she found herself looking full into the bold, handsome
eyes of Sidney Gale, who regarded her with smiling
ease and an expression that spoke of some near un-
derstanding between them. Turning hastily away,
she was confronted by another pair of eyes, dark,
grave, with a troubled look in their depths. Maggie
had not before discovered the presence of Henry Par-
sons, though she supposed he was there. As she
began to read, it was this last look more than any
other that penetrated her consciousness, holding her
with some spell of its own, so that at the close she
involuntarily turned to meet it again; but only to note
that it had grown more gloomy than before, and that
60
A GIRL GRADUATE.
its owner took no part in the applause all the rest
were awarding her. Maggie's essay, which she had
described as "a string of nonsense," was entitled
"People's Follies." She treated her theme with
girlish satire and wit, passing in review the social
foibles of the day, in a sparkling and good-natured
style, that delighted the audience, grateful for this
unexpected chance of being amused, and won round
after round of applause. Maggie had not expected
any flowers, scorning, as we have seen, to take any
precautionary measures to obtain these marks of
favor, and secure in her belief that she should be able
to create an impression and win her share of the day's
honors without that shallow artifice. Her surprise
was the more real, and her pleasure the keener, when
one of the ushers advanced with a good-sized armful.
Among them was a basket of roses from her sister
Helen, an assorted bouquet from Mrs. Fay, and a
cluster of fragrant hot-house blooms from an unknown
source.
But there are some kinds of ignorance that
throw as clear a light on what we want to know as
the most definite knowledge, and a quickened heart-
beat would have told Maggie the source of this partic-
ular offering even if, just before seating herself in
her place, she had not raised her eyes to meet those
of young Gale, piercing her with that same look of
implied understanding. It shamed more than it flat-
tered her, though she could not prevent the rush of
hot blood to her cheeks. The difference between her
position and that of Laura Danvers smote her with
acute mortification, and she said to herself that she
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
61
would seize the first occasion to punish Sidney Gale's
presumption as it deserved.
The valedictory, by Bertha Fay, was followed by an
address from the president of the board and the
presentation of diplomas.
The crowd slowly dispersed, many people going
forward to extend congratulations to the graduates.
Sidney Gale advanced to the charge with a smiling
countenance, bestowing an impartial hand-shake all
round, with a suggestive pressure for Maggie, which
received no response of answering look or touch, that
young lady being apparently absorbed in other mat-
ters; not so deeply, however, but that she noticed how
Gale, his other duties performed, stationed himself at
his cousin's side, relieving her of her flowers and other
impedimenta, and waiting to escort her home.
Thomas Dean had been among the first to leave the
schoolhouse, waiting outside for his wife, who joined
him in a few minutes, alone, Helen having gone in
another direction with Miss Graham. They walked
silently down the street for a space, Mrs. Dean mod-
erating her brisk pace to suit the heavy, uneven gait
of her husband.
66
Maggie was the smartest of 'em all," he said, at
length, turning towards his wife with a look of shy
pleasure mantling his rude features.
“She's smart enough," the other replied, in a man-
ner that seemed to hold a reserved opinion. As a
matter of fact, Mrs. Dean was greatly pleased with
Maggie's success, but she was not going to make a
foolish demonstration of this feeling. Others might
62
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
praise Maggie and laugh at her nonsense, but she was
not going to compromise herself by too outspoken
admiration for her own child.
66
"I could hardly make out 'twas Maggie," her hus-
band continued, rubbing his bristly cheek with his
hand. "Don't seem no more 'n yesterday sence she
was runnin' round the house, cuttin' up all manner of
shines an' havin' her little tantrums."
66 Um
she has her tantrums yet," Mrs. Dean
answered. Her husband did not quite understand
the drift of this remark, turning a questioning face
towards her. He had come to feel so poorly
acquainted with his daughters of late that he natu-
rally relied on their mother, who stood in much nearer
relation to them, for the knowledge he was unable to
gain for himself. Not until the evening before had
this separation oppressed him with a sense of definite
loss and mistake somewhere. He knew Helen better
than Maggie, for she paid him more attention, reading.
the newspaper to him and interesting herself in his
work at the shop; but Maggie had always been his
favorite child. From her babyhood he had always
shielded and taken her part against the more vigorous
discipline she received from her mother.
"You mustn't be too hard on her," he urged, in his
mild tone. “She wouldn't be your daughter and so
much of a Weatherby as she is if she hadn't a bit of
spunk." Mrs. Dean was as proud of being a Weath
erby as if the family had armorial bearings.
"I guess I ain't very hard on her. If a girl ain't
old enough to take care of herself at eighteen, she
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
63
never will be." This sentiment seemed to strike the
listener with doubt, who began again to stroke his
rough cheek thoughtfully, bending his brows to-
gether in some painful inward scrutiny. It was not
easy for him to measure the merit of an abstract prop-
osition at any time, but something in the sound of this
one gave him an uneasy feeling, and struck him as of
the wrong quality. He wondered if this general
remark referred to any special act of Maggie's: she
had done something that displeased her mother, per-
haps, who, instead of punishing her as she would once
have done, had simply washed her hands of her.' The
thought of his bright, innocent Maggie left alone,
unsupported by any older intelligence than her own,
gave him a deep pang.
66
Maggie's a good girl, ain't she?" he asked, in an
anxious tone.
“Well, Thomas Dean, what's come over you?" his
wife exclaimed. "She's good enough, of course. I
guess there ain't much danger of my girls bein' any-
thing else; but she's dreffle flighty and set up in
some of her notions."
"You mean about the hack?" he said, a look of
relief spreading over his face.
"That's all right.
Young folks will be young folks. I ain't the man to
begrudge my girls an extra dollar now and then."
A new thought struck him. "She'll be riding home,
I expect," stopping to look back, as if Maggie was
about to ride by in triumphal procession.
"Why
didn't you wait and ride too?" he asked his
wife.
64
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Yes, I think I see myself! I guess I'm able to
walk a spell yet."
They walked on in silence a few minutes; then Mr.
Dean, who was in an unusually loquacious mood,
spoke again.
"P'r'aps we'd ought to gone up an' spoke to her.”
"Well, I wasn't goin' to push my way through all
that crowd just to shake hands with a string of girls.
I'm all het through now," and Mrs. Dean threw her
broché shawl back from her shoulders.
"P'r'aps she was expecting it, though," the father
urged.
"P'r'aps she was," was the calm reply.
Just then they heard a rapid footstep behind, and
a voice called Mr. Dean by name. Turning, they
confronted a tall, dark-skinned young man, who was
hastening to overtake them.
"It's Henry Parsons," and "How are you, Henry?"
were the greetings he received as he drew near and
the two men shook hands.
"Be'n to see the graduatin'?" Mrs. Dean asked.
"Yes," he answered absently.
66
They're goin' to have some more doin's to-night:
I suppose you'll stay in."
“You mean the alumni meeting. Yes, I have to
take part."
66
Well, then, you'd better come right on home with
us," said Mr. Dean, in a friendly tone. "Have you
seen Maggie?"
"I couldn't get near her," the other replied, almost
angrily. "There was such a crowd of people."
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
65
Mrs. Dean laughed in a way that nettled his nerves
still more, then repeated her husband's invitation.
The young man hesitated, and murmured some ex-
cuse.
66
Why, of course you'll come," said Mr. Dean, tak-
ing his arm. "Maggie'll expect you."
Henry Parsons was by no means sure of this, but
the words had a persuasive effect; and, taking his
place on the other side of Mrs. Dean, the three went
on together.
It was an hour later when Maggie descended the
schoolhouse steps, accompanied by two or three young
gentlemen. She was all smiles and happiness, and
seated herself in the clumsy hack, which stood waiting
for her, with the air of an empress. Her companions
openly vied with each other in their attentions, pla-
cing her flowers and papers on the seat before her, and
lifting their hats with admiring looks as she nodded
a gracious farewell. Leaning back on the cushioned
seat with a smile still on her face, she took a rapid
review of the events of the day. The flattering
looks and words bestowed on her redoubled their
charm as she recalled them in memory. There was
no doubt she had made a genuine hit.
“What a little satirist you are, Maggie!" people
had laughingly said to her, declaring they should be
quite afraid of her after this. A few had whispered
m her ear that she looked the prettiest of any one in
the class; and Judge Foster, the president of the
board, had asked for an introduction to her, and
spoken a few words of honest praise, adding, with a
66
A GIRL GRADUATE.
good-natured smile, that she mustn't be too hard on
them all, she would grow up sometime, and be no
wiser than the rest of them.
All this had been as sweetest incense to Maggie;
and she seemed borne on wings as she gathered up
her treasures and sprang from the carriage, running
up the walk to the side porch, where her father, who
had relieved himself of his Sunday coat, and was
resting in the easy freedom of his shirt-sleeves, sat
with Henry Parsons. Maggie was in such good
humor with all the world that it was impossible it
should not overflow and sweeten her greeting to their
visitor. Crossing the piazza, she gave him her hand
with a beaming smile, and entered the house. It
had come to be a matter of doubt with Henry Parsons,
of late, how Maggie would behave to him; and when,
as now, she proved kinder than he had dared to hope,
a feeling of unreasoning gladness took possession of
him. Rising and standing to one side to allow her
trailing skirts passage before him, he followed her
into the house. The parlor door was open, in honor,
doubtless, of the festive character of the day; and
Maggie passed directly in there to deposit her flowers,
gloves, etc., on the table, and take an examining
glance at herself in the little gilt mirror. Parsons
came slowly to her side, and extended his hand for the
second time.
"What for?" she asked, as she placed hers
in it.
"I thought you might like to receive my congratu
lations too."
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
67
"Oh!" laughing, and withdrawing the hand he
seemed willing to retain.
"Though I don't know but one might get tired of
that sort of thing after a while."
"Not I," was the frank reply.
"When there are
pleasant things to be said to people, I don't care how
many fall to my share."
"I suppose not," with a constrained smile, "only
one wants to be pretty sure the pleasant things are
sincerely spoken.
""
Maggie raised her eyebrows at this. Henry Par-
sons was a young man who, without intending to be
rude or disagreeable, employed a painful honesty of
speech that often made him seem both. There was
no one who would have been better pleased with
Maggie's success than himself, had he been sure of
its effect on her.
“That means, I suppose," said Maggie, with a lit-
tle pout, "that you think I do not deserve any
praise. You did not like my essay.'
"Oh, yes,
I liked it! and I don't mean that you do
not deserve the praise you have received. I should
like to know who praises you in his thought more than
I do." He checked himself, mindful that his words
were leading in a forbidden direction. "Of course,"
he went on, putting aside more serious thoughts,
and coming back to the surface talk Maggie liked
better, "that way of putting a subject is always one-
sided. It was exaggerated, but I suppose you meant
that, — and the style seemed to me a little verbose,
- there were a good many adjectives"
68
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Oh, mercy!" Really it was trying, after having
been told a dozen times that she had written the
brightest essay of all, and praised for her wit and
satire, to come home to meet this knight of the sober
countenance, and be talked to about adjectives. But
criticism from this particular source did not trouble
Maggie much. She understood Henry Parsons's real
feelings too well, and her own power. A woman
must live long enough to experience some of the re-
active effects of the misuse of power before she
ceases to be a little vain of it. But while the knowl-
edge of this old friend's feeling for her pleased and
sometimes moved her, his extreme earnestness, the
gravity of his disposition, often wearied her. She liked
and depended on him too much willingly to hurt him
or to amuse herself with him, as she might have done
with a different kind of admirer, like Sidney Gale.
Though a little afraid of him, and proud of his at-
tainments, she jealously guarded her own independ-
ence in their relations. She could find no safer
refuge from this complicated state of feeling than to
place her behavior towards him on a footing of
sisterly freedom and naturalness. There were other
young men in the village who would have counted
it a sign of advancement to meet with such frank
and friendly treatment as Parsons received, but the
latter felt himself continually baffled and defeated
by it.
"Never mind the essay," said Maggie, still too
happy in recollections of the afternoon seriously to
heed the words just spoken.
"Come and look at my
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
69
flowers," bending over the table. "Aren't they
lovely? This is from Mrs. Fay," holding up a basket
with the card of the rector's wife attached; "and
these roses are from Helen. I never thought of her
giving me flowers."
"And who gave you these?" the young man
asked, taking up the third bouquet, and holding it
awkwardly in his hand.
"It must have been the Great Unknown: there is
no card attached."
She tried to speak in an unconcerned tone, but
flushed, and was manifestly confused. Her compan-
ion noticed it, and a foolish hope sprang up in his
breast. Perhaps she attributed the gift to him, and
the blush and pretty embarrassment were all his. The
temptation was great, but his native honesty forbade
him to profit by the sweet delusion.
"I wish it were I who had given them to you," he
said, in a regretful tone.
“You?” she replied, looking up at him laughingly.
"Oh! I knew it was not you."
This careless speech cut him to the quick, angering
as well as paining him.
“Of course you did not think it was I. You never
think of me at all except as a stupid dolt, incapable
of delicate feeling of any kind."
She looked up at him in surprise.
"How foolishly you talk!" she said.
are not going to be cross. If I don't
giving me flowers, why should you?
will divide with you."
“I hope you.
mind your not
Come, now, I
•
70
A GIRL GRADUATE.
-*
The words "If I don't mind" fell on the listener
like cold rain. No other of harshest blame or denial
could seem to put a greater distance between them;
yet, sore and angry as he was with her, he was even
more displeased with himself, and began savagely be-
rating his own dulness that he had not thought to
give her some flowers. Maggie cared so much for
such things, trifles that, in his usual mood, he con-
demned as beneath the notice of any self-respecting
man. But any attempt at apology could only make
the matter worse; and things had been getting worse
pretty steadily of late between Maggie and him, he
thought, with a stifled groan, so that he dreaded the
recurrence of any new mistake with the despairful
feeling of a man who sees himself continually losing
ground in the pursuit of his dearest object.
hopeless feeling abated a little under the influence of
Maggie's behavior. Taking up the flowers from the
Great Unknown, she began ruthlessly separating them
with nervous fingers, selecting a snowy camellia,
with its leaf of glistening green, to ornament her
companion's button-hole. She had found a way to
punish Sidney Gale.
This
"See, now, how you are to be punished for having
a bad temper," she said, smiling up at him, and ignor-
ing the hurt and pleading look in his eyes. He stood
still as a statue as she fastened the flower in its place,
taking lengthened pains to secure it properly, and
bending her head on one side to note the effect. He
loved this pretty, kittenish creature before him with
all the intensity of a deep and repressed nature. The
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
71
light touch of her fingers, the rustling sweep of her
garments against him, the faint odor of the flowers
she wore, thrilled him with an ecstatic longing. Did
she know it? he wondered. Perhaps, for she forbore
to look up again and meet that dark, glowing gaze;
only stepped back to take a final, critical look at her
work, then, passing her hand through his arm in
sisterly fashion, turned towards the mirror and bade
him view the result. She carelessly allowed her hand
to remain within his arm; and he covered it in
grave, protective fashion with his own, as they
stood there, looking at each other's shadowed like-
nesses. The contrast between them was a striking
one, and rather becoming to both of them, Maggie
thought; but something in the near contact of that
bit of bright girlhood at his side, so daring and
hopeful, sure to win everywhere the admiration she
coveted, made the contrast a painful one to the young
man at her side.
"I look like a black bear by the side of you," he
said, in a discontented tone.
"That should teach you not to cultivate a bear's
manners," she replied. "But even bears can be
taught. I have seen some that were very well behaved
indeed." She made a little moue at him in the glass,
and would have withdrawn her hand; but he pre-
vented it, looking earnestly into the imaged face
before him. She caught the look, grave and intent,
and it held her own a moment.
"How strange it seems to be looking at each other
like this!" he murmured. "It is as if we had sud-
་
{
:
72
A GIRL GRADUATE.
denly met each other's spirits, and could look into
each other's very souls."
"Now you are getting serious again," she exclaimed,
freeing her hand. "I don't like spirits. I leave them
to Miss Graham; and I'm very certain I don't want
to be one. As for looking into each other's souls, I'm
afraid I shouldn't like that any better, though I know
people say that is what heaven is like. I don't want
everybody looking into my soul" —
"Not everybody, of course," was the reply. "But
if there was one we thought more of than—I am
willing you should look into mine-you always
have."
"Have I?" She spoke lightly, with the air of one
whom custom had rendered indifferent to her privi-
leges, and turned again to her flowers. Further re-
lief from a newly threatened attack of seriousness
in her companion came with her mother's appearance
in the open door.
"Supper's ready," Mrs. Dean said. "I don't know
as Maggie will sit down with the rest of us, but I've
took off my kitchen apron." Maggie let this bit of
pleasantry pass, and seated herself at the table, be-
tween her father and their guest, whose presence was
evidently a familiar one in the household, and who
was treated in an unceremonious manner, as if he
were one of themselves.
She was too excited to eat; for, now that the
graduating ceremonies were over, she was looking
forward, with scarcely less eagerness, to the alumni
exercises in the evening, to be followed by a recep-
WHITE MUSLIN AND A DIPLOMA.
73
After the little
tion at the residence of Mr. Danvers.
passage-at-arms between Laura Danvers and herself,
Maggie had had a few reluctant scruples about at-
tending the reception; but there had been a partial
peace-making between the two that afternoon, while
the class was assembled in the recitation room. It
would look as badly for her to stay away as to go, and
create more talk, Maggie had said to herself, as she
canvassed the situation, trying to make the proprie-
ties suit her inclination. Laura Danvers had thought
of this, too, feeling herself in as humiliating a position
as Maggie. Unwilling to incur the kind of comment
which would follow Maggie's absence from the recep-
tion, she determined to do what she could to prevent
it. Approaching her with a constrained air, she ex-
pressed, in a set phrase or two, her regret for the
hasty words of the day before, and added a personal
invitation for the evening. Maggie listened in wide-
eyed astonishment, a vivid flush coloring her cheek.
She read the struggle it had cost the other to take
this step, but, instead of ignobly triumphing over it, a
new feeling of respect and admiration came over her.
She made an impetuous reply.
"I was a good deal more rude to you, and I hope
you will believe me when I say I have been heartily
ashamed of it ever since." Such an answer would
have led to an entire reconciliation with any other
girl, but Laura Danvers seemed a little repelled by
it, turning coldly away. She had not wished to make
friends with Maggie Dean, and meant to have as
little to do with her as possible. Maggie read these
74
A GIRL GRADUATE.
;
thoughts, and the hot tears rushed to her eyes, but
she would not let them fall. "How much she dis-
likes me!" she said to herself, "but she need not.
If she would treat me fairly, she would see that
I could be generous too."
>
CHAPTER V.
A SUMMER SHOWER.
AFTER supper, Maggie changed her dress, and pre-
pared to accompany Henry Parsons to the school-
house. The flounced muslin, which was to do duty
again at the reception, was carefully packed in a long
box, which Parsons carried under his arm; for it had
been agreed that Maggie should go home with Bertha
Fay after the alumni meeting, to dress for the recep
tion there.
“Then, I suppose, you are going to stay all night
with Bertha," her mother said, when she heard of this
arrangement.
"I can't," was the reply. "They have company;
but I ordered the hack to come for me.
""
"Well, I declare," said Mrs. Dean, leaning back in
her chair; "what next, I wonder!" But, without
stopping to tell her, Maggie ran down the steps and
out to the gate, where her escort stood waiting for
her.
"What is this affair at the Danvers's?" he asked,
as they went on their way down the dusty street.
Why, it's the class reception," Maggie replied:
"there's to be dancing and ice-cream."
66
Her companion smiled.
66
'Well, as I can't dance,
and don't care about ice-cream
75
76
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"You don't mean to say you're not going?" Mag-
gie exclaimed, turning swiftly on him.
"Do you want me to go?" he asked, a pleased
look glowing in his dark face.
"What has that to do with it? Why shouldn't
I want you to go? We want everybody to go,”
and with this crumb of encouragement he was forced
to be content.
Henry Parsons's standing in the alumni associa-
tion was shown in his appointment as the orator of
the evening. He had chosen a practical theme, and
delivered a thoughtful address in simple and earnest
style, that won attention to its real merits, and high
praise for himself. Maggie was much pleased, listen-
ing attentively and with a rather elated look, as if
the speaker's triumph were her own, giving him a
shining look of approval at the end, which he felt to
be his best reward. Maggie was at just that point in
her relations with this old friend when she wanted
the privilege of expressing the kindly feelings that
arose naturally in her heart without being held to
account for them. Though she resisted and kept
him at a distance, she was secretly very proud of her
old playmate, who had risen from obscure conditions
to his present position.
For Parsons himself, this rise was cause for mixed
feelings of gratitude and pain. His sensitive pride
was continually wounded by the pitying remembrance
of his early history which he fancied he read in the
friendliest looks and tones. The recollection could
never escape him, and, he believed, could never be lost
3
A SUMMER SHOWER.
77
•
unfortunate son of a dis-
Drunken Tim Parsons, as
to others, that he was the
graced and outcast father.
he was still remembered in his native village, had
been a notorious character in his day, who, after a life
of drink and social vagabondage, had abruptly ended
it one cold winter's night by lying down on the road-
side during a drunken debauch and freezing to death.
This was twelve years after the birth of his son.
Henry Parsons had no recollection of his mother, who
went out of the world soon after he came in. She
had done wisely to die, the son thought. A sense of
charitable forgiveness dwelt along with the remem-
brance of his desolate childhood when he thought of
her. He doubted if his life would not have been
harder still with the image of a pale, toiling mother in
the background, wearing her life out in a thankless
slavery to dead and buried ideals, like other women
he knew. After his father's death, kind-hearted
strangers had interested themselves in him, and pro-
cured him the means of an education; but the cloud
of social obloquy had hung over him from boyhood,
and he knew that he must walk in its shadow to the
end. The remembrance of his lonely childhood never
forsook him, until, in the revolt which a pure, aspiring
nature must feel towards any form of unjust suffer-
ing, he had grown almost to hate its memory, and to
regard with a feeling of passionate envy those young
men among his acquaintance who had come from pure
homes and could call some honorable man father.
The cottage where he once lived, a few rods farther
down the street where Thomas Dean's house stood,
78
A GIRL GRADUATE.
was nearly in ruins. Except for this proximity,
Henry Parsons would have gone miles out of his
way to avoid seeing the place again. As it was, a
merciful or ironical fate had so arranged it that the
most painful associations of his life were inextricably
bound up with the sweetest. A just fate too. The
true lover of landscape never ignores the ugly spots,
knowing what brilliant tints and luxuriant growth are
often found near some scene of noisome decay. The
student of the moral landscape should follow this
example. Henry Parsons lived to learn that he had
no more right than power to escape the hard memo-
ries of his past; that he could do this only at the cost
of some of his most precious recollections, which ran
like gold-colored threads across the woof of his sad-
colored history. In a word, he could not forget the
tumble-down cottage and the picture of the drunken
father reeling home at night, without forgetting
Maggie.
His first happy recollection was of seizing a big
stick to drive away a cow which was frightening her
by innocently barring her passage across the bridge
on her return from one of the runaway expeditions to
her father's shop. He was ten years old then, a
ragged, unkempt lad, whose days were spent in idle
wandering about the streets; while Maggie was a little
girl of six, happy and well cared for. She wore a
pink calico frock and a white sunbonnet, whose
starched freshness had been marred by sooty fin-
gers. Her face was streaked with dark lines, made
in attempts to stay her falling tears. With manly
A SUMMER SHOWER.
79
heroism, he had belabored the surprised cow with his
stick and driven her away, then, asking Maggie where
she lived, volunteered to go home with her. He was
too shy to offer to lead her, but of her own accord she
had placed herself close to his side and thrust her
hand confidingly in his. The touch of those clinging
fingers gave him a new sensation, very sweet and
bewildering; and for the first time the long, dull ache
of loneliness in his breast was stilled. All his heart
went out in an impulse of tender protection to the
little creature trotting by his side. He listened to
her chatter in dreamful amaze, wondering alike at
its silliness and the charm it had for him.
"What made you afraid of the cow?" he asked.
"'Cause I always am," was the reply.
66
Why, that's only Mr. Bright's old mooly. She
can't hook, she hasn't any horns."
"Couldn't she grow 'em quick, like the kitty does
her claws?" asked Maggie, who had never recovered
from the surprise of her kitten's first scratch.
The boy laughed aloud at this; and Maggie, catch-
ing the infection of his mirth, laughed also, though
she did not know why; but well pleased, even at that
age, with the knowledge of her power to entertain.
"Shall you always be standing on the bridge with
a stick when I run away?" she asked, giving a con-
fiding little skip at his side.
"Did you run away?" he asked, in his turn. She
shot a cunning look up at him.
"What did you do that for?"
"I like to. Don't you run away?"
80
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"I don't have to," the boy answered, a little cloud
settling over his face.
"Then, don't you have to be punished, either?”
"Do you have to be punished?" he asked, looking
wonderingly down at her.
"Of course, most every time, maybe."
"Who punishes you?" he asked, in an indignant
tone. "Your father?”
}
"Oh, no!" looking up at him in grave rebuke.
"Fathers don't punish.
"What do they do, then?"
"They toss you up and ride you to Boston."
"Ride you to Boston?" the boy repeated, in a puz-
zled tone. "Then, it is your mother who punishes
you. How does she punish you?" with increasing
indignation.
"Shakes me, and sets me down hard.”
It seemed incredible to the boy that any one could
venture to lay a ruthless hand on this fairy-like
being. In order to see the result for himself, and
with a dim instinct that his presence might prevent
any harm happening to her, wishing he had brought
along his stick to interfere in her behalf again, he
passed through the gate with Maggie to the door.
The runaway was greeted in the usual manner. The
predicted shaking was administered, after which she
was lifted to a high chair to be tied in.
66
Naughty girls must be tied up," said her mother.
"Then they can't run away no more.”
Maggie submitted to these proceedings without a
whimper, and, in fact, felt rather more honored than
A SUMMER SHOWER.
81
grieved over this excessive discipline. She had not
expected to be tied up, a form of punishment she felt
would confer greater distinction on her in the eyes of
her new acquaintance, who stood outside the door,
and towards whom she cast a glance of intelligent
understanding. The boy looked on with a swelling
heart as Mrs. Dean wound the small rope in and out
the rounds of the chair, fastening her unruly charge
securely in. Maggie's calm indifference looked to
him like murdered innocence; and he wanted to rush
into the house, seize her, chair and all, and bear her
far away. He could endure it no longer, and fled
precipitately from the scene; nor was he re-assured
by Maggie's voice calling after him in uninjured
accents,
66
Good-by, boy; I like you; come again when I
ain't bad."
"There's no use trying to punish that child," Mrs.
Dean complained to her husband. "It's like pouring
water on a duck's back. If I shut her in the bed-
room, its ten to one she's in the bureau drawers, and
I'll find the clean sheets and pillow-cases strung all
over the room. It's a pity you're so set against whip-
ping, Mr. Dean. A little taste of the switch would
do her good. You never saw a Weatherby getting
along without a good-sized one hanging up handy
behind the kitchen door, and the Bible teaches the
same thing."
But Mr. Dean, though a very religious man, was
not troubled about the Bible. No child of his should
ever receive a blow. He gave his wife free range in
82
A GIRL GRADUATE.
matters of household government, except in a few
points, where he quietly stated his opinion and stood
by it.
After this introduction the acquaintance between
Maggie and her new friend progressed rapidly. Mrs.
Dean was at first inclined to forbid him the premises,
from the displeasure she felt in his forlorn appearance;
but she soon grew sorry for him, and began to take a
motherly interest in him, getting her reward in the
service of a new pair of hands and willing feet, al-
ways at her disposal, especially in the care of Maggie,
in which respect she came to depend on him a good
deal. In summer time the two children wandered
together on the banks of the Race, gathering wild-
flowers, and watching the shining minnows; while in
winter the boy would take his small charge on long,
glorious rides down the hill, across the frozen stream.
It was he who taught her to skate as they grew older,
and to skip a stone as well as a boy. For years they
bore each other company to and from school, the boy
acting as guide and protector to the little girl, whom
he idolized and submitted to continually, except when
some question of real right and wrong came up be-
tween them, when, if he could not persuade, he
would sorrowfully withstand her. Maggie tyran-
nized over her friend and depended on him at once,
alternately praising and neglecting him. As he grew
to young manhood, Henry Parsons attracted the at-
tention of Rector Fay and one or two other influen-
tial men in the village, who supplied him with the
means to continue his studies. After finishing his
וי
A SUMMER SHOWER.
83
course at the high school, he entered a law office, and
had lately been admitted to the bar. At the same
time he had kept up a course of reading under the
superintendence of Mr. Fay.
Thus, at the age of twenty-three, the son of Tim
Parsons was prepared to enter active life. Hard
work and an unswerving purpose had brought him
thus far on his way, unsmirched by any of the vices
of growing manhood, with pure instincts, a clear
head, and resolute will. Two motives had controlled
all his labors. One lay in the resolve to blot out the
memory of that shameful death by the winter road-
side with an honorable record of his own, and the
other was shaped in the wish to win Maggie Dean.
But no set motive of conduct affords so true an ex-
planation of individual progress as the instinct of
growth planted in every human being. In Henry
Parsons this instinct was very strong. He was sure
to have won his way to a position of merit and use-
fulness, even under more difficult circumstances;
though, after the morbid reasoning which marks us
in the early twenties, he still regarded his lot as one
of exceptional hardship. He seemed to himself a
spotted man in the community, by the very general
good will in which he was held, the expectant attitude
of his friends. He should always be at a disadvan-
tage in Litchfield, and had determined to go away.
His law studies completed, he meant to go West and
make a place for himself among entirely new scenes.
He had also a young man's ambition; and a small
village like Litchfield would have failed to afford
84
A GIRL GRADUATE.
outlet for this feeling, even had there been no decay-
ing hovel at the lower end of Taylor Street to afflict
his vision like an ugly sore. In further preparation
for his new duties he had spent the last two months
in the country, taking a few lessons in practical
farming; for he meant to take up a land claim, more
quickly to secure the fortune his profession would but
slowly gain. He had come into town to see Maggie
graduate and to attend the alumni meeting. The
evening's exercises closed, he remained behind a few
moments, leaving Maggie to go with her friend. She,
too, had had a place on the evening's programme,
giving a humorous recitation. She had some talent
in that line, and the applause she received repeated
in a degree the success of the afternoon; so it was
with a new feeling of triumph and happy anticipation
that she made ready for the festivities that were to
close the day.
The large parlors in Mr. Danvers's house had been
thrown together to serve as a ball-room. Dancing
was a favorite exercise with Maggie, who had always
plenty of partners. The engagement card which
hung at her wrist was soon filled, and two or three
tardy cavaliers turned disconsolately away. She was
conscious of admiring eyes following her as she
floated past in the waltz, with flushed cheeks and
sparkling eyes. She had forgotten everything but
the exciting sport in which she was engaged, when
her eyes fell on Henry Parsons, who had come in late
and stood talking with Bertha Fay, though he kept
directing a gloomy, half-displeased look in her direc
:
A SUMMER SHOWER.
85
tion. She felt this look still fixed on her when her
partner left her at her friend's side, but she would
not raise her eyes to meet it.
"What a pity you can't dance, Bertha!" she said,
consulting her card as to the coming partner. As
the minister's daughter, Bertha was debarred from
joining in many of the young people's amusements.
“Oh, I don't mind!" was the cheerful reply. "I
enjoy looking on, but I have been telling Mr. Parsons
he ought to learn."
"And what does Mr. Parsons say?"
Something
in that tall, stiff figure seemed to have an obstructing
force of its own, which irritated Maggie.
"I didn't find him very easy to persuade," Bertha
replied, sending a smiling glance upward to the
object of these remarks.
"He is not generally easy to persuade, I fancy,"
Maggie said, intent on the arrangement of the ribbon
on her wrist.
The young man kept quite still. He was both
hurt and angry. Maggie had never called him "Mr."
before, speaking in a cool society tone that put him
at an immeasurable distance. Perhaps it would have
been improper to call him anything else there, or to
behave differently from what she was doing; perhaps
these were the manners society required; he knew
nothing of society or its ways except that he hated
both. He could not understand why Maggie liked
such things, and the sight of her whirling about the
room with a young man had given him something
like a moral shock. Finding it impossible to resist
*
86
A GIRL GRADUATE.
his gaze longer, Maggie raised her eyes to his.
66 You
think dancing is a very frivolous pursuit, I suppose?"
He gave a short, satirical laugh.
"Pursuit!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know dan-
cing had been dignified with that name. However,"
with a withering look towards the floor, "there are
plenty of people who seem to have no better." It
was now Maggie's turn to be angry, and she would
have made a sharp retort had not Bertha interposed
in a conciliating tone.
"Papa says there is no harm in dancing if it is not
carried to excess," she said. "It is other things that
go along with dancing that make it harmful. He
would be willing I should learn dancing if it were
not for what people would say," she added innocently.
"Your father is a sensible man, Miss Bertha,"
Parsons replied, "and I am sure there could be no
harm in your learning to dance."
Maggie shrugged her shoulders.
"You ought to
feel quite flattered, Bertha," she cried. "It is not
often that Mr. Parsons condescends to pay a compli-
ment.'
""
"I don't like compliments," Bertha replied gravely ;
and Parsons, feeling that he had offended in a new
direction, turned away.
"What a naughty girl you are, Maggie!" she con-
tinued, when they were alone.
"What have I done now?"
"Treating old friends like that!"
"Then, why is he so disagreeable—always trying
to put me down? What is the use of being so stiff
A SUMMER SHOWER.
87
·
and sober, like a monument smiling at grief, only he
never smiles?" smiling herself back into good-nature
over the twisted quotation and its general inapplica-
bility. "Where is Frank Wilson, I wonder? I am
engaged to him for this galop."
"Let me see your card," Bertha said, taking the
printed slip in her hand. "That's all right," she
added, handing it back a moment after.
"What's all right?" Maggie asked, with a con-
scious look.
"You know."
"Then, I suppose I can go on dancing with a good
conscience?"
"Is a good conscience necessary in a thing of that
kind?"
"It helps," said Maggie, and the next moment was
led to the floor by young Wilson.
She knew that Bertha was pleased at the discovery
that Sidney Gale's name was not on her list, but she
said to herself that it would look better if she were
to dance with him once. If she felt any disappoint-
ment, it was allayed by the fact that so far he had
not danced at all. Early in the evening he had
placed himself beside Mrs. Danvers and her daughter,
to assist in receiving the guests, like a pattern young
relative. It was late when he led Laura Danvers to
the floor for the Lancers. That duty performed, he
began an eager search about the rooms for some one
else. Maggie saw him, though she received him with
a look that seemed to denote that she only at that
moment recalled his existence. He asked to see her
1
88
A GIRL GRADUATE.
card, glanced through it, and gave vent to an impa-
tient exclamation.
"This is too bad!" he said, in a tone of real griev-
ance. "You might have saved one for me, I think."
"How very modest!" Maggie said, fanning herself
with slow unconcern.
66
Modesty isn't my forte," he replied, still studying
the bit of pasteboard. "See here," he went on,
"here's Tommy Holt down for two waltzes. That
isn't fair, Tommy," bending a severe look on a boyish
young fellow standing near. Tommy Holt was one
of Maggie's younger admirers, lately promoted to the
dignity of frock-coats. Her promise to give him two
waltzes had nearly turned his head, but he was a manly
boy withal. He blushed, and was a little displeased
at Gale's manner, but straightened his small figure,
and, with a polite bow, said it was just as Miss Dean
wished, of course; if she desired the exchange-
For the space of a second Maggie wavered, then
bethought herself. "Miss Dean desires nothing of
the kind, Tommy. First come, first served," lifting
her eyes to exchange a long look with Sidney Gale,
who stood regarding her with a half smiling, half
frowning expression, and the same flash of bold ad-
miration in his eyes she had met before. Bending
nearer, he dropped a spiteful whisper in her ear.
"Thank you for giving my flowers to another man,"
darting a scowling glance in the direction of Henry
Parsons, who stood near the door, and who still wore
Maggie's camellia.
"Were they your flowers?" she asked indiffer
A SUMMER SHOWER.
89
Mr.
ently. "You ought to feel complimented.
Parsons is the hero of the evening. He deserves all
our honors."
"The conquering hero?" Gale asked, with a mean-
ing look.
"He doesn't look like it. Looks about as
cheerful as a pall-bearer at a circus."
"No wonder," Maggie retorted, "when the per-
formance is so silly." Gale looked some natural sur-
prise at this.
“That is a refreshing remark for you to make,” he
said. "So you think dancing is silly?”
"It would be for a man like Henry Parsons.'
The musicians struck up a waltz, and Maggie
placed her hand on Tommy Holt's shoulder. She
had meant to plant a little sting in her listener, and
it rankled, at the same time that her open opposition
piqued his admiration anew. "She carries it off con-
foundedly well," he said to himself, "but what a
jealous rage Parsons is in," with another glance
towards the door. "Jealous of Tommy Holt!"
Maggie meant what she said when she told her
friend that she could dance better with a good con-
science. In spite of her enjoyment in an occasion
like the present, a slight circumstance often served
to check it. There was no amusement she liked
better than dancing; but, to be perfect, many condi-
tions were required besides a canvas-covered carpet
and good music. One must have a good partner, and
by that Maggie meant something more than one who
could take the gliding step,- one who added the gift
of bright and sensible talk to Mercury's heels, and
90
A GIRL GRADUATE.
whose hair was not brushed with that exact nicety
which excludes suspicion of a brain beneath.
In a
word, what Maggie missed in her social diversions,
yet hardly knew she missed, was a certain spiritual
grace and charm. If she had expressed her own
feeling, she would have said that she only wanted
things to be what they seemed. They never were
exactly. These thoughts did not greatly trouble her
this evening, only remained like a faint hint of regret
in the depths of a bosom stirred with young and
pleasant emotions.
As the hour grew late, Henry Parsons approached
her again to say that Mr. Fay, who had left early,
had requested him to see Bertha safely home; that he
was going with her then, and would return to accom-
pany Maggie.
"That will not be necessary," she replied, with
some coldness, and explained that she had ordered a
carriage. His shadow had seemed to follow her all
the evening like an accusing conscience, though what
she had done to hurt anybody's conscience she did
not know. It was impossible not to resent the dis-
comfort she felt in his presence.
"Does that mean that you do not wish me to re-
turn?" he asked.
It means whatever you choose to make it.”
"Very well, I choose to make it mean what you
seem to desire," and he turned and left her.
Maggie was a little ashamed, but she defended her
self by saying that her behavior was only the reflex
of his, which was worse.
A SUMMER SHOWER.
91
It was after midnight, and the other guests had
departed, when she descended the stairs from the
dressing-room. She was a little embarrassed by her
lonely position, and hoped to escape from the house
without observation. Hearing a footstep, Mrs. Dan-
vers came into the hall, followed by her daughter.
The latter, when she saw Maggie, drew back, bowed
coldly, and returned to the parlor; but Mrs. Danvers
stepped towards her with a look of motherly concern.
"My dear child, are you alone?"
"Oh! that is nothing," Maggie replied lightly.
"The hack is waiting for me."
66
'Still, I don't like you to go by yourself: I will
call Sidney
""
"No, no!" Maggie exclaimed, alarmed in a new
direction; and, bidding her hostess good-night, she
passed quickly through the door, which a servant
opened for her, and found herself alone outside. To
her dismay, she saw no carriage in front, though she
strained her eyes in the darkness, and, to complete her
distress, a light summer shower had set in. She had
only thin slippers on her feet, and a light wrap over
her shoulders. What should she do? Prudence and
reason alike counselled her to re-enter the house, but
she said to herself that she would die sooner than do
that. Fearing discovery, she ran down the steps and
took refuge under a large tree. She was now thor-
oughly frightened. It was plain that her orders about
the hack had been misunderstood or disobeyed. She
must go back into the house and seek the protection
of her enemy, or walk home in the rain and at mid-
92
A GIRL GRADUATE.
night, through the loneliest and most dangerous part
of the town. Dreadful as this last alternative seemed,
she determined to take it. It was raining faster, and
she must start at once. Gathering her skirts round
her, she was about to run towards the gate, when the
door of the house opened, and Sidney Gale came out.
Maggie drew hurriedly behind the tree and waited.
He carried an umbrella, and paused a moment on the
steps to strike a match and light his cigar, its pale
flash lighting his features distinctly a moment, then
fading out. Raising his umbrella, he ran down the
steps and walked rapidly towards the gate. Once he
slipped and came near falling, but recovered himself,
with a muttered exclamation, passing through the
gate and out of sight. The sound of his footsteps
had no sooner died away than Maggie heard others
coming in an opposite direction; and, in despair, she
prepared to wait until these, too, had passed. Look-
ing out, she saw a young man's figure cross the
lighted space under the street-lamp.
"Henry - Henry Parsons!-O Henry!" she
cried, springing out from her retreat. He turned
and peered eagerly through the darkness, then, catch-
ing sight of a glimmering white object, he flung open
the gate and came towards her.
66
"For
Maggie!" he exclaimed, in sharp surprise.
Heaven's sake, what has happened?" She had broken
down into a fit of hysterical laughing and crying,
clinging to his arm and imploring him to take her
home. He listened to her broken recital of what had
taken place, in a storm of conflicting feelings, rage at
A SUMMER SHOWER.
93
the delinquent hackman, and alarm for Maggie being
mingled with a sudden keen joy in the thought that
it was he who had come to her rescue. It was his
name she had called in that tone of frightened dis-
tress; his arm to which she was clinging, to him she
was appealing for protection. The next moment his
anxiety for her overcame every other thought, and he
said, peremptorily, that she must return to the house
while he went in search of a carriage.
"Never!" she exclaimed, checking her tears, and
speaking with martyr-like resolve. "I will never
enter that house again!" He could not in the least
comprehend this, and tried to remonstrate with her;
but she would not listen, only repeated, obstinately,
what she had said before.
Then, what will you do?" he asked despairfully.
"Oh, take me home!" she sobbed, dropping from
this state of iron resolve. "Take me home. I don't
mind the walk. My slippers are wet through al-
ready."
(6
Slippers!" exclaimed the young man, aghast. He
glanced down at her feet, then cast a look of swift in-
spection over her. Maggie did, indeed, present a
sorry sight. Her long skirts clung limply about her,
and lay in a wet mass at her feet. Her pretty crimps
hung in little damp patches on her forehead, and her
face was wet with tears and the falling rain. If it
had been Sidney Gale standing before her, all his
concern and desire to relieve her could not have
overcome his love of the ludicrous; but Henry Par-
sons had a small sense of humor at any time.
94
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
"How can I take you home?" he asked. "Do you
suppose I will let you walk? It is perfect folly.
You must go back into the house," he added, in
sudden resolution, placing his arm about her in order
to execute his will by force, if necessary.
“Oh, I can't, I can't!" she moaned, feeling herself
growing helpless to resist him, at the same time that
her own resolve never weakened. "What's that?”
grasping his arm and raising her head to listen. His
ear also had caught the sound of rumbling wheels.
The next moment he had leaped the fence, and put-
ting his finger to his lips, boy fashion, rent the night's
stillness with a shrill whistle, then, standing under
the street-lamp, waved his hat excitedly. There was
a pause, followed by a sound of turning wheels, and
almost immediately a hack drew up before the gate.
Parsons, to relieve his feelings, began to berate the
driver for his recent betrayal of trust, while he hur-
riedly assisted Maggie to a place inside.
""
"Don't scold him," she whispered, "that isn't the
man.' At the same time the driver made a surly
grumble to the effect that he didn't know nothing
about no young woman's orders, and reminded his
offended patron, with a touch of professional pride,
that there were two hacks in that town, ending by
throwing out a general remark that folks would do
well to hold their jaw until they found the man that
had earned it.
"Very well, then," Parsons replied. "If you are
not the man, so much the better. Now drive on as
fast as you can."
A SUMMER SHOWER.
95
Maggie was completely chilled, and shivered from
head to foot. Her companion wrapped a heavy robe
about her in a clumsy fashion that would have made
her laugh at any other time. Now she was only
humbled and afraid. Once or twice his hand touched
hers. There was no impulse on her part to avoid the
contact, but his seemed to dread and shrink away from
it with a feeling that looked like repugnance. He was
offended with her, Maggie thought, and was growing to
despise her as well. The good opinion of others was
Maggie's spiritual breathing stuff. Leaning towards
him, she spoke with a hesitation she had never before
felt in his presence.
"I-I am sorry I was cross
with you."
"O Maggie, Maggie!" he cried, seizing her hand,
clasping it with a force that was painful, then drop-
ping, almost flinging it from him. He could not
trust himself to speak further, while she shrunk
silent and ashamed into the corner of the carriage.
In this her hour of distress, she had turned as natu-
rally to him for help as in the old days when she
brought all her childish griefs and troubles to him.
Would it always be so? he asked himself bitterly.
Would she never seek him except when she was in
trouble and deserted by the gay friends on whom she
lavished all her smiles and tenderness? But, though
thoughts like these burned in his heart, it was hard
to resist the influence of her present mood as she sat
there, subdued and still, beside him in the dark car-
riage. The temptation was strong to take advantage
of this sudden gentleness, to pour out his heart and
96
A GIRL GRADUATE.
claim the reward that would never again perhaps be
within such easy reach. Had she not admitted her
need of him in that imploring cry she had sent to him
through the darkness? But a delicate sense of honor
would have forbidden indulgence in this line of
thought, even had his heart been satisfied with the
result. To take advantage of Maggie's present condi-
tion would be the act of a thief, though he stood a
better chance to win what he wanted than he ever
should again, he sadly reflected.
They rode on silently until they reached her home.
Resisting her protests, he lifted her from the carriage
and carried her up the wet walk to the door. He
bade her good-night, then ran swiftly down the walk
to the street. Maggie entered the house and stole
upstairs like a guilty creature, going softly past her
own room, where Helen was asleep, and seeking the
solitude of the spare chamber. Hurriedly undressing,
she crept into bed and cried herself to sleep. On the
floor lay a mass of soiled and crumpled muslin, symbol
of the dejected ruin in which the hopes of graduation
day had ended.
•
CHAPTER VI.
THE RE-ACTION.
MAGGIE rose late the next morning, in a subdued
frame of mind, that lasted several days. The closing
scenes of the day before had left an ineffaceable im-
pression that banished remembrance of all the pleasant
things preceding. Though graduation day was not
twenty-four hours removed, its illusions were de-
stroyed, and already it had become a source of morti-
fied reflection and disappointment. All day Maggie
went about the house in a listless and dejected mood,
unable to fix attention on any of her household tasks,
making innumerable blunders, and exposing herself
to a continual stream of ironic comment from her
mother.
"What ails you?" that sprightly woman asked,
as Maggie stood leaning disconsolately against the
window, viewing the landscape outside.
"A body'd
think you'd lost your last friend.”
66
Perhaps I have," was the unencouraging reply;
and, in fact, her mother's words seemed to describe
very
well the utter abandonment of self-love in which
she found herself. Maggie had been on such excel-
lent terms with herself of late that the contrast with
her present discontent brought a feeling of friendless
isolation, as bewildering as it was painful.
97
98
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Well, you can't expect every day to be like yes-
terday,-folks bowin' an' scrapin' an' presentin' you
with a diplomy."
Maggie colored and answered, with a touch of her
old spirit, that she expected nothing of the kind,
adding that she hoped she wasn't a simpleton.
"Well, I didn't know."
"I'm only tired. I believe I'll change my dress
and go up to Bertha's;" but, before she reached the
stair door, she changed her mind instead, and remained
at home.
It is well we have bodies to help bear the spirit's
shortcomings. A headache serves as the conven-
ient disguise for many a heartache, and the loss of
a night's sleep accounts very well for the pallor and
flagging strength which find remoter cause in a
disturbed conscience. Unhappiness has an exhaust-
ing effect on the vital energies, and Maggie, burdened
with many troublesome thoughts, could honestly say
she was tired. Moreover, the excitement of a day like
that before inevitably brings its re-action, cheating
expectation of what is to come after. To Maggie,
life was symbolized by constant movement; and, now
that there was no call for immediate action or inter-
est in something new, things seemed to have settled
into a state of abnormal dulness and quiet, making
the future landscape look very flat. School ended,
she knew not how she should fill up the long, empty
days to come. Maggie was certain she could never
lead such a life as her sister Helen's, with its un-
eventful routine, rising at the same hour every morn
1
THE RE-ACTION.
99
ing, and walking to and from the store three times a
day. She had noticed that Helen always went the
same way.
This mood of listless indecision lasted until the
following Sunday; and at the last moment, though
she was dressed and ready to accompany her father
and mother to church, she suddenly announced her
determination not to go, letting them depart without
her. Neither tried to persuade her, Mrs. Dean merely
remarking that she thought when folks graduated it
was for evidence they had shown of having some kind
of mind and knowing what to do with it, but Maggie
seemed to have lost hers altogether.
"Oh, well," her husband said, in his mild tones,
"let her stay at home if she wants to; she's kinder
tuckered out, I 'xpect, what with the 'xcitement and
all."
So Maggie took a book, and passing through a
small orchard at the side of the house, and interven-
ing pasture, went down to the Race, to a favorite spot
she called her own. The book was Owen Meredith's
"Lucile." Its easy, mechanical rhythm and romantic
word-painting naturally pleased the fancy of a girl of
eighteen. She opened it near the closing pages,
though she liked this part less than the beginning of
the poem, because it was so painful. Maggie frankly
admitted her preference for those stories, whether in
prose or verse, that ended happily; but she had suffi-
cient literary judgment to know that the best books
were apt to end very differently, and she had a cer-
tain pride here as elsewhere, which made her scorn
100
A GIRL GRADUATE.
the cheap delights of the lower order of fiction.
Tears filled her eyes and a nameless pain rose in her
breast as she re-read those pages of the little volume,
where Lucile, crowned with the spirit of self-sacrifice,
meets her rejected lover for the last time, and, throw-
ing her whole soul into the struggle between his
baser and nobler nature, helps the latter to win, be-
fore she disappears in the gray twilight settling over
the French camp.
"Was life always like that?" Maggie asked herself
with a sigh. Not one of the characters in the poem
was left wholly happy at the end; as happy, that is,
as if he had never made any mistakes. But how
noble Lucile was! That was better than being
happy, Maggie supposed, with another sigh. At
least, that was what the poem meant to teach. That
was what books generally taught, she reflected, with
some discontent. If she were to write a book, now,
it would be to show how people could be good and
happy too. But to have to do as Lucile did, give up
that bright, luxurious life, all praise and flowers and
sunshine, to put on a nun's garb and take care of
sick soldiers, Maggie could think of nothing more
unpleasant than that.
She then passed the real people whom she knew in
mental review before her, to learn what mixture of
goodness and happiness their lives contained. First,
her father: he was good, but was he happy? Maggie
believed not, though it seemed a strange conclusion
to reach respecting a quiet, easy-going man like her
father, who never uttered a word of complaint. But
4
THE RE-ACTION.
101
Maggie believed her father had many thoughts
and feelings he never expressed. She knew he felt
his disadvantages keenly. He was a man imprisoned
by circumstances he had no power to change. No,
she would always count her father among the best of
men, but she did not believe he was one of the
happiest. Her mother, then? She smiled a little
and dismissed this part of her subject. There was no
need to trouble herself about her mother, who never
had any feeling of doubt or discontent about herself.
And Helen? Well, if Helen were happy, it was in a
queer way, which Maggie did not envy. It was easy
to guess what Helen's own answer would be, that
being happy mattered little providing you did the
thing you ought. Next the image of her friend
Bertha passed before her. Yes, here she could give
a satisfactory answer. There was no doubt that
Bertha was good and happy too. The two things
seemed to run together in a nature like hers, all
cheerfulness and content. The rector's daughter
had that well-regulated disposition which finds all
wrong-doing more difficult than enticing. She had
neither Maggie's adventurous spirit nor mental quick-
ness.
The image of Sidney Gale flitted before Maggie.
If thinking well of one's self could make one happy,
then undoubtedly he was happy; but she doubted if
he had much deeper cause. This mental procession.
ended in the remembrance of Henry Parsons. He
was like Helen, and would think any happiness of
little account that was not earned by some kind of
102
A GIRL GRADUATE.
difficult effort. Her thoughts then wandered a little,
and she began to speculate on the probability of Par-
sons having gone back to the farm the day before.
He would have been more likely to stay and spend
Sunday with them had it not been for the trouble-
some events of Friday evening. As it was, Maggie
doubted his coming; doubted, too, his power to
remain away. Her reflections were cut short at this
point by a rustling footstep, and, looking up,
she saw
the object of them coming down the bank. He
paused a moment, and his eyes met hers as if in
doubt of his welcome. A faint blush colored her
cheek, not so much at the sight of her visitor, as
in remembrance of their last meeting.
"I met your father and mother," he explained, as
he threw himself on the ground at her side, "and
they said you were not going to church, so I con-
cluded I wouldn't either. I thought I wanted-
why, you've been crying!" He sat upright as he
said these last words and looked at her.
"I haven't either," Maggie replied, brushing her
hand across her eyes; "at least, it's only a book I've
been reading."
He took the book from her and began turning the
leaves with gingerly fingers. He read but little
poetry, save of the severer order, like "Paradise Lost”
and "The Excursion," necessary to a young man's
knowledge of English. This little volume, with its
dainty binding of blue and gold, would have aroused
his mistrust, even had it not had the power to excite
Maggie's tears. Life had brought him knowledge of
THE RE-ACTION.
103
s› many real ills that he had small sympathy to be-
stow on the factitious ones of made-up people. He
handed the book back to her and asked her what it
was about.
"Oh! it's about a man and woman who loved each
other and were to be married, only they quarrelled
and separated, so he fell in love with another woman,
not so deeply in love as with the first, you know, but
they were engaged just the same. Then, just before
they were married, he received a message from the
first saying he must bring back all her letters, and he
does so, and then they fall in love with each other
again." Here the listener's lips took on a perceptible
curve.
"There seems to have been a good deal of 'falling
in love,' and the expression fits the case, I should say
'falling in love' indeed.”
“Oh, you are always so critical! Of course, they
had never stopped loving each other, only they didn't
know it. Then he says he will break off his engage-
ment and she consents
"Who consents, the second one?"
"No, no, the first; but afterwards she repents and
sends him back to marry the other one. Then she
goes on sacrificing and sacrificing herself until she
gets to be a sister of charity in the hospital, and has
to wear coarse gray serge." This climax was too
much for Parsons's gravity, and he laughed outright.
"You may laugh if you like," smiling a little her-
self, "but I say it was very noble of her."
"Oh, it was sublime!" Then, more seriously, “I
104
A GIRL GRADUATE.
don't think much of a man who doesn't know his own
mind better than that."
"Why, would you have had him break his word?"
she demanded reproachfully.
"A bad promise is better broken than kept," was
the sententious reply.
"You may think so, perhaps, but the people who
live in books never act like that. There would be no
plot nor anything. The story would end with the
first chapter."
“That would be a good thing. Of course, she only
wanted to test her power over him when she sent for
her letters."
“Oh, what a shame!" Maggie murmured.
"Pooh! it's easy enough to see through a thing like
that."
"Do you mean that he saw through it? Then he
would have despised her and staid away."
"Oh! would he?" the young man answered, with
an ironical laugh. "Your hero was a fine fellow, no
doubt, but it's evident he hadn't altogether lost
Mother Eve's taste for stolen fruit."
"Oh, do let poor Eve alone!" said Maggie, with
the natural grievance the sex has come to feel in
allusions of this kind. 66
Why, you're getting to be a
perfect cynic," speaking in that tone of mingled re-
buke and flattery which young women use in address-
ing remarks of this nature to their gentlemen ac-
quaintances. "Don't you believe there is any true.
feeling in the world?”
"Yes, I do," he made quick reply, turning glowing
THE RE-ACTION.
105
eyes upon her.
"There is plenty of it all round us.
We have only to reach out our hands to find pure,
self-sacrificing love waiting to serve and bless us.
We need not go to books to find out what that is.
But most people are such ingrates and fools, turning
their backs deliberately on the good given them, to
whine and cry after the moon."
Maggie flushed and looked uneasy. The conversa-
tion was drawing near the line marked "dangerous.
Indeed, she had not been without an exciting sense of
danger from the beginning, which both tempted and
warned her back from pursuit of the chosen subject.
An acute observer of the times has said that to talk
about love is to make love, an opinion which Maggie
would have stoutly denied, even while a frightened
instinct proved its truth.
"I always thought the moon a rather useful inven-
tion," she said, speaking lightly and taking a little
mental skip to a safer standing-place in the discus-
sion, "especially on a dark night."
"I never saw the moon on a dark night," was the
reply. "It's well enough in its place, no doubt; but
you'd have to try a long time before you could light
the kitchen fire with it. There are plenty of things
to cry about in the world, without getting some sickly
poet to poison us with his diseased fancies."
"Oh, well! it wasn't the book only that made me
cry," Maggie said, with a touch of self-defence. “I'm
all out of sorts anyway," leaning back against the
trunk of the tree under which they were seated.
She was in the mood to talk out her feelings, and
106
A GIRL GRADUATE.
again grew careless of consequences.
the re-action," with a faint smile.
different now that school is over.
everything had suddenly stopped.
66
"I suppose it's
Things seem so
It's just as if
Did you feel that
way?” she ended, turning to her companion.
66
Why, no," he replied slowly, "I think I felt as
if things had just begun. I was glad school was over
that I might get to my law-books."
Yes, of course; it's so different with a man," in
weary acceptance of the smaller fate allotted to her.
"There's always something ready and waiting for
him."
A dark flush rose to the young man's face, and he
was hesitating for a reply, when she spoke again.
"Of course I could go on studying, but what is the
use when you don't know that you'll ever do any-
thing with it? There's Bertha, now. She's going
to study Italian with her father, and read Dante in
the original; but of course I couldn't do that, even
if"—"even if I had a father instructed in modern lan-
guages," she might have been going to say, but instead
of that she broke into a little helpless laugh at her
own expense, "even if I wanted to."
"Then, if you don't want to read Dante in the
original, why worry about it?”
“Because it's not wanting to do things, at least
not knowing whether you want to do them or not,
and yet thinking perhaps you ought to want to do
them, that makes it so hard to decide."
This was a way of stating the case that her listener
did not try to follow, covering his face with his hand
*
THE RE-ACTION.
107
in gloomy silence. Here was Maggie bemoaning a
future that looked all blank and purposeless to her to
the man who had offered her his love and stood ready
to make that future clear; yet apparently he filled no
larger space in her present thoughts than the small
black insect crawling across her shoe. A dumb hope-
lessness settled over him, and a feeling of stupefied
surprise at her cruelty or insensibility, he did not
know which.
"I suppose I might learn shorthand," she began
again. He sprang to his feet and walked down to
the water's edge. One who knew the mental conflict
passing within might have thought it was for the pur-
pose of throwing himself in, had the stream been more
than twenty inches deep. Maggie, without apparent
notice of this behavior, rose and slowly followed him.
They stood together a few moments, looking into the
running water and listening to the faint plash of the
waves.
"There is a nest of minnows," she said, pointing
to a sun-flecked spot where the darting forms of the
little scaled creatures glanced in the light. As she
spoke, both her memory and his went back to the
time when they used to visit this same spot together.
With tin cup and pail they would wade out to the
middle of the stream to catch the minnows, and take
them home to inhabit a miniature pond in the rain-
barrel. His eyes followed the direction of her finger,
but he did not speak.
"It is not so pleasant here as it used to be," she
went on. "The bank is not so green, and the water
108
A GIRL GRADUATE.
is shallower. Or is it because we have grown
up?"
"I think it is because we have grown up."
"How mournfully you say that, as if you were
sorry. I'm not sorry. I think I like being grown
up. But I feel as young as ever," she added rather
inconsistently, testing this remark by picking up a
stone to throw into the water and hear the splash.
"Don't you?" turning a bright, careless face up to his.
"Just about," was the grim reply. "I don't think,
in that respect, the pyramids have the advantage of a
day over me."
Maggie greeted this remark with a ripple of laugh-
ter that to her listener joined in its discordant effect
on his feelings with the sparkling sunshine and the
rustling leaves.
"Have you forgotten that I am going away next
week?" he asked her suddenly, his tortured soul gaz-
ing entreatingly at her through his eyes. She turned
her own away.
"So soon?" she asked, in as careless a tone as she
could command.
"Are you going to send me off to Dakota without
a word, Maggie?" he asked, in a low tone.
"I am not going to send you to Dakota at all."
"Don't play with me," he said sharply. "How
much longer must I wait for an answer?" There
was a moment's ominous silence after this imperative
speech. Maggie's cheek flushed, and she raised her
head proudly. When she spoke, it was with a kind
of deadly quiet.
THE RE-ACTION.
109
"You need not wait any longer."
He shot a quick apprehensive look at her and turned
pale. But she did not wish to be too severe, and when
she spoke again it was with the old playful ease.
"Have you heard the story of the man who asked
a woman to marry him, and when she asked time to
consider said that it must be now or never? Do you
know what her answer was?"
"I can guess," was the reply, turning a stricken
face to one side.
"Oh! I do not want to hurt you," she cried, with
sudden remorse. "Why can't we leave things as they
are? No girl ought to promise a thing of that kind
when she feels as I do."
tone.
"Why not say outright, then, that you hate me?"
“Because I do not hate you,” in a sweetly judicial
"On the contrary, I like you- like you better
than any one I know-almost," withdrawing herself
a little farther from him as he turned eagerly to-
wards her. "But, if I were to say what you wish, I
should hate you," she went on in pitiless candor.
"It's very unkind and tyrannical in you to try to
make me say it; and it is of no use," speaking in a
firmer tone. "I have said I would not talk on this
subject. I will not be bound. I belong to myself.”
She threw out her arms with a quick upward motion,
as if invoking the free air about her and the bound-
less stretch of blue sky above.
“All this means but one thing," he said, standing
beside her in marble stillness. "You do not love
me." She made no reply to this.
110
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"My God!" he broke out, with a passionate sob in
his voice. "Why, then, must I care for you? Why
must love be spilled like water on the ground, when
there are people who go mad with thirst for it? All
my life I have loved you. You know what that life
has been-not a ray of brightness in it until I found
you.
But you, you care no more for me than for the
dry stick that brushes against your dress. I say
there's something terribly wrong in the universe
when things turn out like that, when there's nothing
for a man to do but tear his heart out of him and
trample it in the dust."
Maggie was both shaken and frightened at this
outburst, and the sight of the suffering she was caus-
ing moved her conscience as well as pity. For a
moment she seemed very small and blameworthy in
her own eyes, for the absence of a feeling like this she
had power to evoke: and the impulse to substitute
that sentiment of kindly interest and admiration she
did possess was very strong. Precisely here is
the critical turning-point in many a young woman's
experience, where sympathy, combined with an
aroused conscience, assumes love's guise, and yields
the gift of a higher feeling. The question why hon-
est love cannot win return in kind is one that has
puzzled older heads than Maggie's, and it was to her
credit that for the passing moment her main feeling
should be that of reproach and self-deficiency. Tears
filled her eyes, and she felt herself at once the most
abused and wickedest girl in the world.
"Oh, I am sorry!" she said, lifting a contrite face
THE RE-ACTION.
111
both,” her old
to her lover, and speaking in a trembling voice. "I
am sorry, and I-I have done wrong. If only you
would not take things so-so hard. You ought to
see I have tried to act for the good of us
peremptory spirit coming back again.
should say yes, and then be sorry.
is better broken than kept,' you said."
66
"Suppose I
A bad promise
No, no, I will wait," he said hurriedly, waving
his hand to dismiss this side of the case.
"I don't know," she went on plaintively, "per-
haps I am selfish. If I am not willing to be bound,
neither should you be."
"What is the use of talking about that?" he ex-
claimed. "I am bound whether I choose or not. I
love you. I shall go on loving you until I die. I
might as well try to swing myself off the earth as to
get rid of that feeling."
She could find no reply to this, perhaps did not try
very hard; and they stood silent a moment.
"I think I had better go into the house now," she
said at length. They climbed the bank, he assisting
her with his strong hand, and they walked towards
the house.
"Aren't you going to stay to dinner?" she asked,
with a timid glance at him, as he stood doubtfully at
the porch-steps. He hesitated, and murmured some
feeble excuse.
"It's all right if you don't wish to, of course,” she
said, with a little hint of injury, "but father will be
disappointed."
Upon this he went up the steps, and seated himself
112
A GIRL GRADUATE.
in a large rocker on the porch, while Maggie entered
the house to help about the dinner. He felt very
wretched, but the hope that had formed the main
motive of his life still kept its hold on him. The
words "Father will be disappointed" carried an
assurance of coming success that their speaker had
carelessly overlooked. It was impossible that Henry
Parsons should not feel his cause strengthened by the
knowledge of the secure position he held in the
esteem of all of Maggie's family. He knew that her
parents looked on him as her accepted lover, and that
knowledge could but give rise to the feeling that, in
some wilful way of her own, Maggie looked on him
in the same light.
1
CHAPTER VII.
AN EVENING DRIVE.
It is not belittling the troubles of a girl of eigh-
teen to compare them, though rather tritely, to the
summer clouds which temper the summer warmth
and brightness; since those skilled in such matters
know that the smallest mass of diaphanous vapor sus-
pended in the skies has its effect on the general cli-
mate. Maggie recovered her usual spirits in a day or
two, but she never outgrew the memory of that par-
ticular Sunday, which stood in a gray outline by
itself, years afterwards when she was better able to
understand it. Along with her lively social instincts
and natural light-heartedness ran a more serious vein,
which, if there had been some judicious friend to
develop it, might have become a leading motive in
her character. As it was, there was no one standing
near her who could help her much except her sister,
whose love was too solicitous, and whose example
embodied too many restraints, with a morbid devotion
to the difficult side of life, to be of great value to an
enthusiastic nature like Maggie's. It was principally
through her association with the minister's family
that she had derived those ideas of superior culture
and refinement which, thus far, had done little else
113
114
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
than unsettle her and arouse a host of conflicting
hopes and ambitions.
Now that her school-days were ended, the feeling
of high expectation which had held her for the last
few weeks was mingled with a sense of wasted effort.
What did it all amount to anyway, the diploma she
had won, and the knowledge of Fasquelle, if she
could not apply these elements of strength to some
new enterprise commanding all her energies? Mag-
gie stood just at that point where we are enamoured
of existence for itself. Simply to be alive was a boon,
and every disagreeable thought and remembrance
which cast a shadow over the smiling outlook before
her was brushed impatiently aside. It was impossible
to resist the belief that the future held something very
good for her, some measure of strange, unexpected
bliss, some unknown experience or emotion that
should set her quite apart from and above her pres-
ent self, and make a new, exalted creature of her.
Some people would have but one interpretation to
put on such a state of mind in a young girl; but
their method of analyzing and providing for the grow-
ing souls about them is as shallow as it is vulgar. It
was not a lover Maggie wanted. She only wanted to
live. That fate was kindly disposed towards her
seemed manifest in the strong, buoyant faith that
upheld her and fluttered like wings of promise in her
heart. She went about the house in a dreamful
maze, a smile and sometimes a song on her lips. She
had an odd trick of suddenly pausing in the door to
look down the street with intent, abstracted gaze.

1
AN EVENING DRIVE.
115
"Are you expectin' comp'ny?" her mother asked,
during one of these meditative pauses.
flushing, turned away and said, "No."
Maggie,
"I don't know what has come over me," she added.
"I feel just as if something was going to happen."
"There is," her mother responded dryly. "That
white jacket in the clothes-basket is going to mildew
pretty soon if you don't iron it;" but Maggie was
too secure in her present mood to allow a little
sarcasm of this kind to disturb it. She laughed, and,
relinquishing her higher expectations for a time,
went into the kitchen to finish her share of the week's
ironing. An aspiring wish in the heart gives relish to
the meanest task, and Maggie ironed the white jacket
unusually well. She did not dislike work of this
kind, having inherited from her mother that sense of
efficiency and love of useful occupation which de-
lights in accomplished results of any kind. What
Maggie really disliked was the necessity, growing
out of laws and conditions she had no hand in
making, that she should always do such work and be
contented in the doing. Lucile had never ironed a
white jacket. Neither had Laura Danvers. Why,
then, was she, Maggie Dean, obliged to do so, and
why should such a circumstance make any difference
in the feeling of people towards her? Why should
people look down on her, and she feel herself at a
disadvantage at every turn, because her father was a
workingman, and her mother did her own housework
and sometimes tripped in her grammar? These were
the questions that perplexed and irritated Maggie,
116
A GIRL GRADUATE.
+
sowing the seeds of a rebellious discontent in her
heart.
She was still very young when she began to notice
the difference between her own home and that of her
associates, for it had been Maggie's fortune since
childhood to find her most intimate companions in a
class considerably removed from that into which she
was born. Our public schools afford the only true
republic, and the average boy or girl in attendance
thereon is a born democrat. Maggie, with her good
looks and merry disposition, was always a favorite,
while a resolute judgment gave her a position of
leadership among her mates. Privileges of this kind
were partially offset by the jealous suspicion in
which she was held by girls in her own social rank,
like Mollie Harmon for example. But Maggie re-
sented too much the implication that girls like Mollie
Harmon were her natural companions, to feel proud
of the distinction of being raised above them. What
she wanted was to obliterate all distinctions of that
sort, to stand on her own merits and be allowed her
fair chance in the world, irrespective of the fact that
she was a girl and the daughter of the foreman of the
locomotive works.
Externally, Maggie had led a narrow and most
uneventful life, with no chance for that variety and
widening knowledge which youth craves. She felt
cramped and imprisoned in her present surroundings,
her imagination finding little to feed on in the dull
routine of her life at home. Her mother's house-
keeping was of the kind that makes substantial pro-
AN EVENING DRIVE.
117
vision for all material necessities, without a touch of
refining grace or sentiment to lift it out of the com-
monplace. Her narrow, set ways irritated Maggie,
whose fancy continually took flight to other homes,
like Bertha's, where something of fresh interest was
always going on.
Sweeping-day had followed ironing-day in Mrs.
Dean's establishment ever since Maggie could remem-
ber. That energetic woman doubtless knew why she
turned the house into universal chaos once a week,
which to the general eye seemed in the same speck-
less condition at one time as another, subjecting the
innocent carpets to a vigorous sweeping that seemed
to own a vindictive motive of some kind, and taking
the minutest pains with the dusting. Maggie, who
had escaped a share in these proceedings when at
school, now bore a part with lively protest.
"I think it wears out the carpets to sweep them so
much," she said, shrewdly attacking her mother in a
vulnerable point; but the latter only replied that she
guessed it wore out Maggie's feelings a good deal
more, adding that she noticed the latter were not of
the best wearing quality.
"I don't see the use of making such a fuss," Maggie
went on, in the independent manner of our free-born
youth. "Mrs. Fay doesn't do that way. She only
sweeps when it's needed, and a little at a time, and no
one is disturbed."
"That's one way," Mrs. Dean said, in a tone that
defined her opinion of it. "That's what you might
expect from some folks - ministers' wives."
118
A GIRL GRADUATE.
.
“Their house looks a great deal better than ours."
"I've been there," was the brief reply. "Books
and papers scattered round everywhere, and things
strung from one end of the house to the other. Mrs.
Fay had to take her bunnit off the sofa before I could
sit down."
"Well, that's what I like," said Maggie perversely.
"I like a house to look as if somebody lived in it and
used things. Ours looks so stiff, especially this
room," glancing discontentedly about the little
parlor, with its hair-cloth chairs, and the small table
standing between the windows, holding an album
and subscription copy of the Life of Grant. She had
always disliked the parlor more than any room in the
house. A wicked impulse came over her to tumble
the chairs over each other, and to roll the respectable
sofa into the middle of the room. She resisted it,
contenting herself with shifting the Life of Grant to
another corner of the table, and dropping a newspaper
on the floor as if by accident, but really to test the
effect, which must have been disappointing, for she
picked it up again, and, drawing down the shades,
went out of the room, closing the door behind her,
and leaving it to another week's undisturbed stillness.
The sitting-room pleased her better, for, though the
rag carpet on the floor was undeniably ugly, it had a
neat and cheerful look, while the tall clock in the
corner and her mother's work-basket gave it an air of
homelike use and comfort. Helen's desk, sur-
mounted with a few bookshelves, stood in another
corner. The collection of books was small but care-
AN EVENING DRIVE.
119
fully chosen, mostly with reference to the owner's
studies in the Emerson club. There was a complete
set of the books of the writer who gave his name to
the class, a few volumes of modern poets, and George
Eliot's novels. Maggie was quite proud of Helen's
bookcase, which imparted an intellectual tone to the
house it would otherwise have been quite bereft of.
Her only regret was that Helen would not keep it in
the parlor, where an occasional visitor might see and
be impressed by it, such a caller as Sidney Gale for
instance.
Maggie had not forgotten the promised visit; but
she said to herself, as the time drew near, that of
course he would not come after the way she had
behaved to him at the reception, and it pleased her
to believe that it would be her fault if he did not.
To help support her in this belief, she half inclined
to accompany her mother, after the tea-things were
put away, to visit a sick neighbor, but this perhaps
would be carrying things too far. Her father and
Helen were away, and, glad to escape from the house,
she went out of doors and began wandering idly
about the yard. It was not long before she heard
the sound of wheels on the bridge; and the next
moment a carriage had stopped before the gate, while
its occupant leaned forward and bade her a gay good-
evening. Maggie returned the greeting rather coolly,
but her cheek flushed, and her visitor did not seem
discouraged.
"Don't you want to take a ride?" he asked. She
hesitated a moment, and if the speaker had been
120
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
nearer he would have noted the pleased flash in her
eyes, but it died out in a moment.
"I can't," she said carelessly.
66
Everybody is
away, and I must take care of the house.”
"What's the matter with the house?" Gale asked.
She smiled feebly, but made no reply.
"All right, then; I'm coming in," he said, throw-
ing the reins over the dashboard and springing from
the carriage. In a moment he had fastened the
horse, then came quickly through the gate towards
her, extending his hand in friendly fashion. It would
have suited them both better to remain outdoors, but
Maggie felt that the visit would lose half its impor-
tance if not surrounded with all the proper cere-
monies, and led the way into the house. When they
had mounted the short flight of steps leading to the
front door, she found, to her mortification, that it was
locked. Hurriedly bidding her companion wait, she
ran round to the side entrance to let him in. She
was nervous and embarrassed when she opened the
door, and could summon none of her usual spirit to
respond as he raised his hat with mock courtesy and
inquired if Miss Dean was in. She led the way into
the parlor, which was stiflingly hot, having been
closed all day, and hastened to open the windows;
while a humiliating sense of injury rose within her as
she remembered how differently they did things at
the Fays', where the whole house stood open from
morning to night, and visitors were received without
ceremony. She fancied that Sidney Gale was taking
a mental inventory of his surroundings, and for a
AN EVENING DRIVE.
121
moment she hated him for coming; but when she
turned towards him she saw only the same look of
smiling unconcern which he usually wore.
"Weren't you expecting me?" he asked, after they
had seated themselves. "You know you invited me
to come."
"I invited you!" Maggie exclaimed, recovering her
usual manner. "You invited yourself."
"Is that so?" reflectively. "Perhaps I did. Some
people are born to the good things they get in this
world, some have them thrust on them, some achieve
them. I achieve mine.”
Maggie found no reply to this except a rather aim-
less "Oh!" She was uneasy. A heavy, scuffling step
on the back porch told of her father's return. The
next moment he had entered the house, and, hearing
the sound of voices in the parlor, drew near and stood
awkwardly on the threshold. Maggie rose to her feet,
but before she could speak he had turned away with
an abashed look at the discovery that Maggie had a
young gentleman visitor. A vivid scarlet flushed her
cheek, while Sidney Gale dropped his eyes to the
floor to hide the laughter in them. Maggie stepped
to the door.
"Did you want me, father?" she asked, in a duti-
ful tone; but there was only an indistinct murmur in
reply, and she returned to her place.
Gale then began talking in his quick, easy strain,
asking her what she had been doing with herself since
vacation, declaring it was an age since he had seen
her.
122
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
"You treated me pretty badly at the reception,"
he said, "but I have a nature that never retains a
grudge.'
""
"Your nature is very soft and amiable, I have no
doubt."
"I don't know whether to take that as a compli-
ment, or not," appearing to revolve the matter in his
mind, "but I suppose a little softness is necessary to
the amiability." Leaning towards her and balancing
himself on the edge of his chair, he fixed a pair of
expressive eyes on her.
"Why won't you come to ride?" he asked, and
began to plead with her. "We can drive into the
country, and return by moonlight. There's a full
moon. The roads are in a prime condition after last
night's rain.".
Such an invitation had an enticing sound, but Mag-
gie was in a sensitive mood, and her fancy instantly
darted beneath the words and extracted an injurious
meaning. She turned her keen bright eyes on her
visitor, while the lines about her mouth grew a little
firmer. “Drive into the country." If he had asked
Laura Danvers to drive, would he have been so par-
ticular to specify the direction they should take? A
feeling of resentment swept over her, and a new
desire to punish Sidney Gale.
"I've seen the full moon," she said superciliously.
"I was afraid you had. I'd throw in a couple of
comets and the aurora borealis if I could, but there's
no pleasing some people."
Maggie paid no heed to this. A daring thought
•
AN EVENING DRIVE.
123
had presented itself to her. She hesitated a moment,
then gathered courage and spoke again.
"I have a book of Fanny Brown's I should like to
return. You may take me there if
you like."
Fanny Brown lived at the other end of the town,
and they would have to pass through Main Street
to get there. There was a hint of a challenge in this
request, but if Maggie looked to see any sign of wa-
vering or embarrassment, she was disappointed. Gale
rose to his feet with polite alacrity, and in a few
moments they were seated in the carriage with the
horse's head turned towards the village. After they
had crossed the railroad tracks, Maggie leaned impul-
sively forward and took the reins into her own hands.
“Let me drive,” she said, and Gale, giving lazy assent,
adjusted himself to a comfortable position in the corner
of the carriage.
He saw he was in for a little lark, and rather en-
joyed the prospect. It was evident that Maggie was
still angry with him, but there are certain kinds of
feminine displeasure as gratifying to a man's self-love
as any demonstration of friendliness, and he was con-
scious of admiring her all the more in these contrary
moods. She had never looked prettier than now, her
slim figure sitting proudly upright beside him, with
that excited color in her cheeks and a dangerous
sparkle in her eyes. It had taken but a moment for
Maggie to mature her plan of action. She meant to
drive straight down Main Street, always crowded at
this hour with pleasure-seekers, in full sight of every-
body, with Sidney Gale. That was the way she would
124
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
punish people for saying that he only sought her society
secretly, and for daring to speak slightingly of her.
This act of public vindication accomplished, she meant
to punish Sidney Gale in turn by dropping him com-
pletely and forever, never to speak nor look at him
again. Thus would she clear her conscience of all
blame, and at the same time secure her own triumph
amid the general humiliation of her enemies. She
flapped the reins on the dashboard and urged the
horse forward. That surprised animal turned his
head to look at her.
"Flora thought you were driving," said Gale, in
his laziest tone. "I haven't learned to flap the reins
myself."
"Oh! I dare say my driving isn't very scientific,"
Maggie replied.
"Well, you needn't be discouraged. Science may
reach it some day. Save the pieces," he added, as the
carriage rolled swiftly over a cross-walk and tilted
wildly on the springs, remarking that he neglected
to take out an accident policy before he started.
Maggie bent forward and took the whip from its
socket.
"I guess I wouldn't do that," he said. "Flora
doesn't like the whip. She is a reasoning creature in
spite of her sex. Moral suasion suits her a good deal
better."
""
"If I am to drive Flora, she will do as I say,
Maggie replied, twisting the reins about her hands
and still keeping hold of the whip.
"All right," said Gale, in careless resignment.
AN EVENING DRIVE.
125
They made a sharp turn of the corner that led down
Main Street, the carriage lurching dangerously to one
side and dislodging its owner from his easy position.
Maggie no sooner caught sight of the busy street,
with its shops and the throng of people on each side,
than her resolution suddenly gave way, and a feeling
of sickening shame came over her. The horse was
travelling now at a swift trot, which attracted the at-
tention of every one on the street. In the doorway
of one of the stores she caught sight of her sister's
alarmed and surprised face, and among a group of
young women on their way to the weekly prayer-
meeting she saw the figure of Laura Danvers. Her
dislike of the task she had set herself increased every
moment, and she longed now for nothing so much as to
be out of sight of the world whose observation she had
so boldly courted a few moments before. With this
feeling uppermost, impatient of every obstacle that
hindered her escape, she pulled wildly on the reins,
and in a moment of desperation struck the horse with
the whip.
"What are you doing?" Gale cried, seizing the
reins; but he was too late. The misused animal had
sprung sharply to one side, hurling the carriage
against a heavy farm-wagon, overturning and spilling
both occupants on the ground.
An excited crowd gathered about them. The horse
was secured, the broken vehicle restored to an upright
position, while the two victims of the disaster imme-
diately became the centre of an idle and curious
group of spectators. Maggie, who was the least
126
A GIRL GRADUATE.
hurt of the two, was assisted to a hotel near by. A
sprained wrist and a few skin-bruises covered her in-
juries, but Sidney Gale's were of a severer nature, as
a bleeding cut on the face and a broken arm hanging
limply at his side testified. He was borne away for
repairs to a surgeon's office near by, and had ample
time to reflect on many things before his recovery.
Helen Dean had hurried at once to her sister's side,
but, learning the slight results of the accident, left her
in the care of others to be sent home when she should
have recovered from her fright, while she hastened
on in advance to inform her parents of what had oc-
curred, before any exaggerated report should reach
them. It was a great relief to Maggie that she was
not to return home with Helen, nor would she allow
any one else to go with her. With her bandaged
wrist and a strip of court plaster covering a scratch
on her cheek, she seated herself alone in the hack
which had been summoned to convey her, leaning her
aching head against the cushions.
The stormy feelings within made her head ache
more than any physical hurt she had received. She
was thoroughly frightened and displeased with her-
self, but she was also still too angry with other peo-
ple to feel true repentance. The thing she had con-
templated as a means of self-defence had turned out
to be another proof of her folly. People would talk
more than ever now. A sense of outraged justice
mingled with her humiliation, hard to bear. Doubt-
less there is a germ of innocent intention in the most
hardened criminal, which makes the prescribed penalty
AN EVENING DRIVE.
127
appear in very unjust relation to the thing punished.
How much more, then, should a girl like Maggie feel
the disproportion between the motive and effect of
this latest piece of folly ?
Her parents and Helen were standing in the little
sitting-room with distressed and anxious looks when
she opened the door and confronted them. She was
pale, and trembled in every limb, sinking feebly into
the nearest chair. The members of the Dean family
indulged in few demonstrations towards each other,
and for a moment the three only looked at the re-
turned culprit without speaking.
Well, miss, you've given us a pretty fright!" her
mother exclaimed, her voice pitched in a high key, to
cover whatever emotion she felt. Maggie made no
reply, only raised a pair of weak hands to remove
her hat. It was her father who stepped forward and
with clumsy fingers assisted her, laying the hat on
the table and looking down at her with a troubled
face.
"It's nothing," she said, looking up at him with an
ineffectual attempt to smile. "I shall be better in a
moment;" and Thomas Dean, vainly trying to sup-
press a queer sound in his throat, turned abruptly
away.
"You might have been killed," her mother contin-
ued, in the same high, admonitory key, as if she found
some excuse for reproof in the fact that Maggie was
still alive.
66
Well, we're mighty thankful 'tain't no worse,"
her father said, in a conciliatory tone.
128
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Oh! I'm not badly hurt," said Maggie, recovering
herself. "Mr. Gale was hurt much worse. His
right arm is broken." She had an idea that this vol-
untary mention of the companion of her escapade
helped to relieve her of its odium, but no one seemed
interested in Mr. Gale. Helen spoke no word either
of gratitude or sympathy, only kept regarding her
sister with stern, questioning eyes that Maggie found
unbearable, at last rising from her chair, saying she
would go to her room.
"Yes, you'd better get to bed right away," her
father answered.
"And I'll make you a cup of ginger tea, and put
some hot draughts to your feet," said her mother, who
desired some outlet for the energies such a crisis' had
developed.
"For pity's sake, what for?" Maggie exclaimed
petulantly, appalled at the prospect of having to un-
dergo a course of maternal doctoring.
"There, there, don't bother the child," her father
said. "All she needs is a good night's sleep. I
guess she don't want no hot draughts," and Maggie
was allowed to depart in peace to her room. But
before she went she did an unusual thing. She went
to her father and raised her face for a good-night
kiss. He flushed with surprise, but bestowed it
heartily.
66
Good-night, my little girl, good-night," he said,
in a freer manner than his wont, evoked by hers.
Then Maggie turned and looked full at her sister.
Some way she felt less afraid of her now that she
AN EVENING DRIVE.
129
had kissed her father. Helen could not think her
such a very bad girl after that.
The older daughter turned to her parents when
they were alone.
"Is Maggie engaged to Henry Parsons?" she
asked abruptly. Her mother looked surprised, but
"Don't
disposed of the subject in her usual fashion.
ask me," she said, shrugging her shoulders. Helen
turned mutely to her father, who was regarding her
with astonishment.
66
""
Why, of course, they're engaged; leastways, it's
the same thing. They've growed up together.
Helen turned away discouraged. It would be cruel
to pierce this simple faith with any of her own
troublesome doubts. She had learned long since to
dispense with much sympathy or understanding in
her mother, and there were many things about which
her father could not help her. The half-shaped fears
that continually beset her about Maggie were some-
thing she must settle and clear away for herself.
This was not easy, and she sometimes grew weary of
a sense of responsibility which had no power to win
any answering sign of gratitude or trust, but she was
not one to shirk a duty because it was likely to prove
a thankless one.
When she went upstairs she found Maggie still
dressed, who rose hurriedly from the bed where she
had thrown herself.
"Why are you not in bed?" Helen asked. She
spoke in a severer tone than she intended, a thing
that often happened, and hindered, she knew, the
•
130
A GIRL GRADUATE.
progress she might have made in her sister's confi
dence.
Maggie murmured some excuse, and repeated what
she had said before, that she was not much hurt any-
way, and there was no need to make a fuss.
"Then you can listen to me. I have something to
say to you."
Maggie made no reply, standing before the glass
and taking out her hairpins, awkwardly, with one
hand.
"Are you engaged to Henry Parsons?" Helen
asked abruptly.
"No." The answer was short and immediate, and
had the effect of a small explosion. There was a
moment's silence in the little chamber.
66
Perhaps, then," her sister went on, in an upbraid-
ing tone, “you are engaged to Sidney Gale.”
"Engaged-engaged-I am sick of the word,"
was the impatient reply.
"Then, I hope Henry Parsons feels in the same
way. He is too good a man to be trifled with," was
the warm response. Maggie leaned towards the
mirror to investigate a small new scratch she had dis-
covered, and adjust a bit of court-plaster.
"If you have refused him, why does he keep com-
ing here?" Helen went on; but Maggie only raised
her eyebrows and perked up her chin with a saucy
movement, in sign of her inability to solve abstruse
problems. Her sister, after regarding her with hope-
less dissatisfaction, abandoned this point of attack
and took up another.
AN EVENING DRIVE.
131
·
“Why were you out riding with Sidney Gale?”
“I wasn't out riding with him. I only asked him
to take me to Fanny Brown's.'
""
"I thought he was to marry his cousin, Laura
Danvers."
"What of that?" was the pettish reply. "Can't
a person look at any one else? I should think we
were living in the Middle Ages." Maggie would
have found it hard to explain just what the Middle
Ages had to do with the subject in hand, but that did
not diminish the sense of having made a crushing
argument.
"It's of no use, Maggie," her sister said, after
another interval of silence, and speaking in a hurt
tone. "I am six years older than you, and under-
stand a great many things you know nothing about.
It is my place to help you, but you will not let me.
You deceive me and shut me out from your confi-
dence. I hope nobody may ever cause you the pain
you are causing me.
Maggie was a little ashamed. There was no one
whose good opinion she valued more than her sister's
if only it were not so difficult to obtain. She hesi-
tated and stammered in her reply.
"I-I don't know what you mean by confidence,
and I have not deceived you. You asked me if I
was engaged to Henry Parsons, and I said no.”
"Do you mean that you have refused him?"
"I-I don't know as you would call it a refusal
- exactly," then, no longer able to meet her sister's
look, she broke out in petulant protest. "There
132
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"9
never was a girl so bothered and worried as I am,'
she cried, the quick tears beginning to flow. "Here
I have just escaped a dreadful accident. I might
have been killed, but nobody cares. All you do is
to scold and find fault with me. And my wrist hurts
me dreadfully."
She sank down on a chair and began to unwind
the bandage round her wrist, tears of childish grief
running down her cheeks. There was a touch of
honest complaint in her words, and Helen felt that
she had spoken inopportunely. In atonement for
this error, and real sympathy for her sister's suffer-
ing, she set to work to relieve it, bathing the injured
wrist in cold water, and rebandaging it for the night.
More important moral crises than this have been
averted by so simple a plea as a sprained wrist.
Maggie was conscious of a definite sense of relief,
while she submitted resignedly, and with a little air
of injured innocence, to her sister's nursing, thanking
her when she had finished in a patient tone, which
carried an accent of forgiveness along with it. The
two sisters completed their preparations for the night
in silence without recurrence to any disagreeable
topic. In a few moments the light was extinguished,
and they lay side by side, each revolving her own
troubled thoughts, until the external darkness stole
inwards and both slept.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN IMPETUOUS LOVER.
HENRY PARSONS was not in town at the time of
the accident, but he heard of it the first thing on his
return the next day. He had returned to the farm-
house where he had been staying, to complete prepa-
rations for his coming departure, intending to spend
the few days intervening in Litchfield. It was a
perfect summer morning, bright and not too warm,
when he seated himself in the buggy to drive back
to the village. He was in an unusually cheerful
frame of mind, and the day was one which fostered
his mood.
The sight of waving fields and green woods, past
which his horse carried him in a contented trot,
brought a sense of grateful happiness, and seemed
the natural ministers of the youthful hopes he carried
in his heart.
Henry Parsons was not of that harsh and ascetic
temperament which his words and manner sometimes
indicated. The self-denial and ceaseless industry
which had guided his life overlaid a nature warm
and sensitive. He missed the gift of self-expression,
hoarding the rich treasures of sentiment and feeling
in his own breast until the need of imparting them
to a sympathetic heart was like an ache. This
+
133
134
A GIRL GRADUATE.
morning his habitual mood of serious reflection was
lifted for a time, and his own thoughts were of the
kind that afforded him cheerful and sufficient com-
pany, joining in the matin song of the birds above
his head. The sore feelings about himself, his lonely
lot and the privations he had suffered, were abated
for a while, lost in a strong, hopeful assurance of
good things to come. The blood of a healthy and
resolute young manhood flowed in his veins, a high
purpose filled his soul, and the breath of young love
warmed his heart. The thought of Maggie was
present in all he saw and heard. He wished she
were by his side, yet hardly knew he wished it, so
completely did the mere thought of her satisfy him.
Absent, his imagination could construe all those
kindly looks and words he might have sorely missed
in her presence.
For the passing moment he had the same feeling of
peace and security in regard to Maggie as towards
the rest of the world. He no longer blamed her for
her behavior towards him, but made large and loving
excuse for her, defending her against himself and
condemning his own impatience. He resolved to
behave very differently in the future, to command
her confidence and good opinion in a different way.
He meant to see as much of her as possible during
the rest of his stay, but not to fret and tease her with
a lover's importunities; to be very wise and discreet,
and, by keeping himself under strict control, re-estab-
lish the old friendly relation between them, and so
win her perhaps unawares. He had been harsh and
AN IMPETUOUS LOVER.
135
exacting towards her. Because he had grown old
before his time, compelled to think and care for him-
self from childhood, was a stupid reason for expect-
ing Maggie to behave in the same grave and reason-
able fashion. She was but a child, with a child's
liking for the bright and lively side of life. No won-
der she pouted and grew cross when he tried to
impose his plain, strict notions on her. He would do
that no more, but so conduct himself towards her
that she should feel the same ease and happy content-
ment in his presence as in others'. Thus with his
heart all aglow with hope and good resolve he drove
into town.
The news of the accident gave him a great fright
at first, followed by heartfelt relief that the conse-
quences were no more serious; but other very un-
pleasant sensations arose when he learned the partic-
ulars of what had happened. These were conveyed
to him in the most disagreeable manner, with peculiar
nods and winks and pretended attempts at sympathy,
from a group of idle young fellows, who gathered
about him and related the story, now grown to be the
town's talk, of the flirtation between Maggie and
Sidney Gale. Parsons, angry and amazed, tried to
answer his tormentors in their own vein, but his jeal-
ous mortification and pain were too manifest. Nat-
urally enough, the story of Maggie's acquaintance
with her newest admirer had gained exaggerated pro
portions, and Parsons, hearing it for the first time,
was quite unable to separate the true from the false,
even had he been in a mood to discriminate. But the
136
A GIRL GRADUATE.
main facts of the case were bad enough, and he now
read all of Maggie's late conduct in the light of this
discovery. She had another lover than himself, who
until now believed he stood alone in any possible
thought of hers on such subjects. She had been in
the habit of meeting this lover secretly. He had
given her flowers and they had quarrelled. The
knowledge that facts like these could only have been
disclosed by the idle boasting of one whose duty it
was to preserve silence, added tenfold to Parsons's
rage, and, dizzy with pain and a horrible dread, he
turned his steps towards the railroad.
Maggie was alone. Her mother, taking advantage
of a bargain sale, had gone to the village to replenish
her stock of table-linen. Mrs. Dean had little faith
in bargain sales of any description, and interrupted
her preparations to attend this one with many expres-
sions of scornful unbelief.
net.
"It's all humbug," she said, as she put on her bon-
"Below cost,' indeed! Does any one suppose
that George Fairchild has made all his money by
giving away his goods? He needn't think he can
palm off any of his cheap stuff on me.
It's risky
buyin' damask anyway, the starch fills it up so; but I
generally know what I'm buyin'! I suppose I may as
well lay in a couple of tablecloths."
"I wish you wouldn't get the unbleached, though,"
murmured Maggie, in spiritless fashion, listening to
all this talk with her external hearing chiefly.
"Why not? They wear white, and last a good
deal longer."
AN IMPETUOUS LOVER.
137
"They wear out first. It's like Arnold's writing-
fluid. It turns black, they say; but I like an ink
that's black in the first place."
"You'd like the world made in a minute if you
could have your way. People should be a little
forehanded. We've got to think about to-morrow
and next week as well as to-day."
Her
"I like to-day a great deal better," Maggie replied,
but this statement was not literally correct. Already
to-day had become a perplexing problem to her, which
she was trying vainly to solve. The same feelings of
injury and angry resentment remained which she had
felt the night before, to which was added a helpless
discouragement, as she strove to think her way clearly
out of the difficulties into which she had fallen.
indignation with Sidney Gale increased every time
she thought of him. She declared him to be the sole
cause of all her trouble, at the same time that her
conscience pricked her with a remembrance of her
own share of folly, and honest remorse for the injuries
he had received. She wanted to put these mixed
feelings into shape in some way, and determined to
write Sidney Gale a letter.
What a strange, foolish comfort is that which comes
from pouring out our feelings on paper, rising from
the fatuous delusion that here as nowhere else we
shall be able to present that clear mental likeness of
ourselves which the injured or injuring friend cannot
mistake! Maggie was still too young to know how
vain are most of our attempts at self-explanation,
how difficult it is to permeate another consciousness
138
A GIRL GRADUATE.
with our own personality and its claims. She was
burning with a sense of general injury which she de-
termined to resist and put an end to.
After her mother had gone, she got out her writing
materials and sat down to her task. She had but a
vague idea of what she wanted to say, but that did
not in the least diminish her determination to say it.
It should be something that, while it aimed to be
very magnanimous, should yet clear herself from all
blame, and leave the reader with a deserved sense of
culpability, mingled with admiration for her own
generous behavior. To fortify herself in her resolve,
she directed an envelope first, and laid it to one
side. She sat nibbling the end of a pen and frowning
at the sheet of paper before her, when she was inter-
rupted by a quick footstep ascending the steps out-
side, and, rising hastily, she stood facing Henry
Parsons. For a moment they looked at each other
without speaking, a shock of mutual intelligence
darting from one to the other and holding them in a
moment's startled attention. He noticed her band-
aged wrist and the strip of court-plaster on her cheek,
and, though signs of injury like these had little
power to affect him in his present state of mind, it
was natural to make them the subject of his opening
remarks.
“You have been hurt," he said, in a voice more up-
braiding than sympathetic.
"Yes, a little," she replied lightly. "But it is of
no consequence. Won't you sit down?” indicating
a chair. "Mr. Gale was hurt much worse than I."
AN IMPETUOUS LOVER.
139
"I did not come here to talk about Mr. Gale,"
was the quick reply, spoken in a tone that belied the
words.
Maggie paused a moment in the arrangement of
the papers she was gathering up to put away. It
looked as if things were to go on from bad to worse,
and with a feeling of exaggerated self-pity she rather
welcomed this evidence of additional coming injury
towards herself. She felt helpless to stem the current
of anger she saw setting towards her, and grew care-
less of results.
"What did you come for?" she asked. "To pick
a quarrel?"
"I came to tell you that I know everything. You
have deceived me. All this time that you have been
encouraging and leading me on, you have been receiv-
ing the attentions of another man. The whole town
is talking of your flirtation with Sidney Gale."
These last words stung Maggie to the quick.
“And you believe what a lot of silly gossips say?"
she cried impetuously. He looked at her in amaze-
ment.
""
"Do you mean to say it is not true?" he asked,
"that you have not received attentions from him, and
that you did not go to ride with him last night?'
"That is nonsense," she broke in. "If you call
that”
“And that he was not in the habit of meeting you
after school and walking home with you? that it was
not he who gave you those flowers"-
"What flowers?"
140
A GIRL GRADUATE.
“And that it was not because you were angry with
him that you gave them to me and made me a public
laughing-stock? Maggie - Maggie," his voice break-
ing here, "what had I done that you should treat
me like that?”
Maggie was aghast at this minute revelation of her
affairs. In a flash of swift and shamed enlighten-
ment she saw it all. It was Sidney Gale himself
who, with bragging egotism, had confided this version
of her conduct to his familiar cronies about town.
Never before had she felt so bitterly the humiliation
of her position, but the high, reprimanding tone which
Parsons had assumed aroused all her spirit.
“You do not know what you are talking about,"
she said. “If — if you understood such matters at
all, you would know that when a young man gives a
girl flowers and she cares no more for them than to
give them to—to some other young man, he would
take it as a compliment and
""
"I don't know how other young men feel," Parsons
broke in hotly. "There are young men perhaps who
are willing to be made a tool of." He strode angrily
across the room, stopping near the table, where his
eye caught sight of the directed envelope. "Even
now you are writing to him," he cried, seizing the
envelope and holding it before her as if challenging
her to deny it. His manner offended her even more
than his words. She stepped towards him and took
the envelope from him with an air of cool proprietor-
ship.
"It is quite true," she said, looking steadily at
...
AN IMPETUOUS LOVER.
141
him. "I was writing to him. What of that? I
have a right to do so if I choose. I am not respon-
sible to you for my actions." She spoke the last
words with a slow significance that made her listener
pale. "The sooner we understand each other, the
better," she went on, in growing excitement. "Last
Sunday you wanted me to answer a certain question
of yours, and I asked you to wait. You need wait no
longer. I will answer it now."
There was not a word of reply from the mute,
averted figure before her, and Maggie felt herself
growing stronger with every word. In spite of her
excitement, she could not help being aware of the
dramatic character of the situation. She felt that she
was doing it very well. ·
"You are very fond of telling me my faults," she
went on, delaying the execution of her threat. "I will
tell you some of yours. You are tyrannical and meanly
suspicious." Here the tall figure drew a long, deep
breath and turned its eyes slowly towards her. "You
listen to a lot of mean, contemptible gossip," she went
on excitedly, finding it difficult to preserve her for-
mer manner, "and then come here and make all
manner of accusations against me. And because I
will not stoop to defend myself" - here she paused
to brush an angry tear from her cheek. "Not for
the world would I marry a man like that."
is
He looked at her with sharp mistrust.
your answer, is it?"
"And that
That is my answer," she replied, in her stateliest
manner.
M
142
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Do you think I do not know what all this means?
You do not love me. You never have. If you loved
me, you would not care whether I was tyrannical or
not." Maggie opened her eyes at this.
66
Perhaps not, but if you want to marry a Circas-
sian slave you had better go to India."
He had it on his tongue to tell her that he was
going to Dakota instead, and by the midnight train;
but he doubted its effect.
"You do not love me," he repeated, in the same
accusing tone. "You care more for a miserable little
popinjay like Sidney Gale, than for an honest man,
who has loved you all his life."
“You can abuse Mr. Gale behind his back if you
like, of course. He cannot defend himself."
sons.
"Oh! he knows how to defend himself," said Par-
"He defends himself by rehearsing his young
lady conquests." The words had no sooner escaped
his lips than he was bitterly ashamed of them. Mag-
gie turned quite white.
"How dare you?" she exclaimed. "Not another
word," raising her hand as he opened his lips to speak.
“Leave me, and never come near me again." She
pointed to the door.
66
Maggie, for Heaven's sake listen to me!"
"I will not listen to another word," she cried, still
pointing to the door. He cast a long, despairing look
at her, which she returned with that of an insulted
goddess, then silently obeyed its mute signal.
Left alone, her shame and misery culminated, and
she threw herself down in a chair, and wept bitterly.
AN IMPETUOUS LOVER.
143
The first violence of emotion spent, she was indul-
ging in a gentle after-shower of grief, feeling herself
the unhappiest and most abused girl in the world,
when the clock struck, warning her of her mother's
near return. She rose hastily to put away her papers
and prepare to meet her. Catching sight of the
directed envelope, she seized and tore it into minute
fragments, with a sudden fierce energy, that seemed
to bear a personal motive of some kind. Maggie's
epistolary efforts in this direction ended here, and
Sidney Gale never received his letter.
CHAPTER IX.
A FAREWELL VISIT.
PARSONS spent the remainder of the day in restless
excitement and despair. All resentful feelings were
overlaid for a time by a stinging remorse, and he
would have given much to recall the words which
had closed his interview with Maggie, and banished
him from her presence. But, sincere as was this feel-
ing, a hopeless conviction lay beneath, which warned
him it would be useless to see her again. He could
no longer doubt the real state of affairs between them.
Nothing was plainer than that Maggie did not love
him. She had met all his reproaches and demands
for an explanation of her conduct-just demands,
he still believed them-with proud resentment, un-
touched by any softer emotion. He had been unable
to move her, except to anger her. Not the least
feeling for him nor desire to keep and merit his good
opinion mingled with her indignation. She had never
cared for him. He had been nothing but a bore and
obstacle to her, that she was glad to free herself from
at last, taking quick advantage of his mad words to
send him away from her. It would be folly to try to
see her again, and, since there was no other motive
for remaining in Litchfield, he might as well leave at
once. Going back to the hotel, he packed up his few
144
A FAREWELL VISIT.
145
possessions, and, that no fleeting impulse of a contrary
nature might change his purpose, bought his ticket.
The price covered nearly half his savings, but his
heart was too sore to feel any forebodings over this.
Dread of the future was changed into indifference,
and the pain of separating himself from lifelong
associations into an eager wish to escape from the
conditions which had brought about his present suf-
fering. He had always meant to leave Litchfield, half
hating the place as he did because of the dark, ugly
stain it had left on his innocent boyhood and strug-
gling youth. It would be strange indeed if he were
to take to sentimentalizing over it now. His prepa-
rations for departure at an end, there still remained
twelve hours to dispose of before he could go. A
part of this time was spent in a farewell visit to his
old friend, Mr. Fay. The minister was greatly sur-
prised at the news of this sudden leave-taking, and,
with the privilege of his position, pressed for the
reasons, but Parsons evaded him.
“I am all ready to go,” he said. "There is nothing
to keep me here," with a touch of bitterness the other
did not notice, "so I may as well start."
"Well, well," said his clerical guardian, "I sup-
pose so, but it seems pretty sudden.
Let me see,"
putting on his spectacles and moving slowly toward
his desk, "I was to give you some letters, wasn't I?
I don't know as they will do you any good. I have
received a good many letters of introduction myself,
but I'm afraid they haven't increased the feeling of
obligation to my deserving fellow-beings as they
•
146
1
1
i
A GIRL GRADUATE.
should. The best letter of introduction a young
man can carry is in his face. If there's no word of
recommendation to be read there, the written ones
are not of much account."
"You are rather discouraging," the young man
said, with a forced smile.
"Tut, tut," the other replied, "don't be mock
modest. You don't think so poorly of Henry Parsons
as you'd have us think."
"I don't think very well of him just now, I can
assure you."
He
"Ah, well, that's natural too. Every man falls out
of love with himself at times," though the rector was
not aware he ever had. "Now, let's see," settling
himself leisurely in his chair and drawing a block of
paper before him. "There's Rev. Charles Austin of
Fargo. If you stop there, you must call on him.
was a classmate of mine. I remember we used to dis-
pute a good deal about the first chapter of John.
He's a good deal of a mystic, Austin is; a bit of a
pagan too, takes Hegel to interpret Christianity with,
and falls back on Plato to support Paul. But then,"
correcting himself, "Austin's a good fellow. He will
be glad to see you. He will tell you I was the most
promising young man in the class. I dare say he
wonders why I haven't redeemed the pledge of my
youthful precocity, but I can trust you not to let
him into that secret. Then, there's Col. Easton of
Bismarck," the rector went on, in his slow, refined
accent. “He was the Sunday-school superintendent
in my first parish. I must give you a letter to him.

A FAREWELL VISIT.
147
He's a practical man.
I dare say he can give you a
lift-great politician, I'm told" —
"I sha'n't go into politics," Parsons said, rather
bluntly.
Politics is
"No? Well, perhaps you're right.
getting to be a nasty kind of business." The rector
was one of those mild censors of his own country
who like to condemn it in an occasional phrase bor-
rowed from the older civilization across the water.
"And the trouble is, all the decent young men feel
as you do, so I don't see when things are going to
improve. If grumbling at a bad thing and letting it
alone could improve it, our national politics would
have been purified long ago. But I'm not advising
you to go into politics, you know," looking quickly
up at his visitor, as if in dread that this general criti-
cism might be supposed to point to some definite line
of action. "I know one or two lawyers in Bismarck
too. You will be more interested in them. One of
them is my nephew-getting rich through a lucky
investment in mines, I hear, something he dipped into
while waiting for a practice. You have to wait for a
practice out there, as elsewhere, you know. You
mustn't expect to find a crowd of clients waiting for
you to come along and hang your sign out."
"I am not expecting it," Parsons replied, with the
patient air of one who is required to pay respectful
attention to the meaningless advice of his superiors.
“Well, now, I'll write my letters. I think I will
write to Austin first. I am always conscious of a
little strain on the intellect when I write to Austin.
148
A GIRL GRADUATE.
•
I never can think of a point sufficiently remote and re-
condite to begin on. It never does to talk to Austin
about the weather; he doesn't know there is any. I
think I'll tackle him on the last encyclical message
from Rome." He took up his pen, and Parsons be-
gan moving about the room on pretence of examining
the books.
"You might go into the sitting-room and wait," the
rector said. "Bertha is there."
"I would rather stay here," said Parsons, not
catching at first the other's hinted wish, and feeling
unable to support the burden of a half-hour's conver-
sation with the minister's daughter. "That is," he
added, "unless I disturb you."
"I shall have to admit that you do," the minister
replied. "The truth is that I am so accustomed to
being by myself when I write, that I doubt if I could
compose an order to the grocer if any one were with
me. It's a great weakness. I mean to correct it
some day," in the hopeful tone of one who sees a
long future before him in which to execute the vir-
tuous resolutions of the present.
Parsons found Bertha sitting by an open window,
sewing. She looked very womanly and domestic, he
thought, with her work-basket standing near, and her
fingers busily plying their task. He had never seen
Maggie sewing, and had often heard her say she hated
it. Above her head a canary hung in its cage and
poured forth a joyful roulade of trilling notes as Parsons
came forward and rather unwillingly seated himself
near her. He had rapidly decided there was no need
A FAREWELL VISIT.
149
*
to speak of his coming departure to Bertha until he
had received his letters and it was time to make the
family a formal farewell; but the necessity for tell-
ing her arose when she spoke of a church social
to be held at the rectory that evening, and expressed
the wish that he should be present.
66
Going to-night?" she exclaimed, when Parsons
had made his excuse. Then, without reflection, and
still under the impulse of her first surprise, "Does
Maggie know?" She blushed painfully as soon as
*the words were spoken, then plunged forward into
another kind of talk to cover her confusion. Why did
he go so soon? Her mother would be disappointed.
She had meant to make a little farewell company for
him. Why did he go off to Dakota anyway? Did he
despise Litchfield so much? Soon there would be no
young men left. But perhaps she would take a trip
West sometime; her father was talking of a vacation
trip to Denver, taking her with him. Well, she
hoped he would be very successful.
Parsons listened with an abstracted air, while the
canary, in emulative fury at this unusual flow of talk
from his quiet mistress, hopped wildly on his perch
and poured out a very cataract of high, piercing song.
It was not long before the study door opened and the
rector called Parsons. He rose and bade Bertha
good-by, leaving a farewell message for her mother.
“There they are," the minister said, handing him
the letters. "You must go to hear Austin preach.
You'll connect yourself with the church, of course?"
"I suppose so," the young man said, rather indif-
150
A GIRL GRADUATE.
'.
ferently, and thanked the rector for his kindness,
who politely disclaimed the need. "You must
write," he went on. "I'm not a very good corre-
spondent myself, but one of us will answer your
letters. I sha'n't bother you with any advice or good.
wishes," he added, laying his hand on the young
man's shoulder. "I expect good things of you, and
shall not like it if you disappoint me.
It's a great
bore having to change your opinion of people, and
involves the waste of a good deal of time. Don't
you put me to that trouble. That's all I have to
say."
"I wish I better deserved your good opinion," said
Parsons, with true humility, "and all the help you.
have given me, but I'm afraid the best thing about
me is that you and a few others took a notion to be-
lieve in me.
""
"I hardly think we merely took a notion," the
minister replied, in his easy tone.
"Belief in our
fellows is usually reached by a more difficult process,'
with a smile of amiable cynicism. "Some of us saw
a young man who seemed to have the right kind of
stuff in him, working hard to help himself up in the
world, and we said that was the kind of job we liked
to have a hand in." The young man inwardly winced
a little at the expression, " up in the world."
"If you had turned out worse and disappointed us,
we might have called it a case of pure benevolence;
but as you have more than justified the expectations
of your friends, they can only look on their interest
in you as a sound investment, which proves their own
A FAREWELL VISIT.
151
sagacity." Parsons smiled a little. This sort of talk
fell pleasantly enough on the ear, but failed to satisfy
a deeper hunger that craved a word of more heroic
cheer and counsel.
"The worst is about over with now, I suspect.
You have had a rather hard struggle, but that will
teach you how to hold on to what you have got. You
are industrious and plucky, with no bad habits, and
you have a head on your shoulders.
You'll get
along."
"I don't know about that. I doubt if the worst is
over for a young man simply because he has read a
few text-books and doesn't drink. He may have a
weakness that is as injurious as a bad habit.”
Yes, we all have our weaknesses, but I wouldn't
be too hard on them. I confess to a little sympathy
with a brother clergyman who said he liked a man
to have an occasional vice or two." Then, as he
caught the despondent look on the other's face, he
dropped this tone, and spoke with a little more
seriousness."Are you in any real trouble, Henry?"
66
Nothing that any one can help me about," was
the hurried reply.
-
"If it is anything about money matters," the
minister began.
“No-no it's not that. I have all the money I
need. I was only wondering why a man's faculty
for blundering never taught him anything. There's
a useful theory that our mistakes constitute our best
means of knowledge. I wish I were a proof of it.”
"Goethe says something on that point somewhere,
152
A GIRL GRADUATE.
I think it is Goethe," the other said musingly.
"He explains it by saying that experience never pre-
sents us with the opportunity to repeat the old mistake,
but only with conditions for committing a new one.
It's like trying to master a burglar-proof lock.
There are any number of combinations all leading to
the same end of opening the safe, but knowledge of
one doesn't help to understand the others."
"And there is no one principle running through
the whole?" the young man asked, with an anxious
note in his voice.
"I can't say that, but if there is, I suspect the man
who made the safe is the only one who knows it,
unless,” he added, with his easy laugh, "it is the
burglar who robs it.”
“Then wisdom may be as easily acquired by cheat-
ing methods as any other?"
Well, if the burglary led to the man's punishment
and subsequent reformation-I see that my round-
about way of talking displeases you a little," noting
a rising frown on his listener's face; "but wait till
you are as old as I am and you'll find your definitions
not so easy a fit as they are now. The young would
like to settle all questions with a single line of divis-
ion, like the sheep and the goats. Theologically
speaking, I believe, of course, in the sheep and the
goats; but, as an unprejudiced observer and rather
indifferent student of natural history in its human
offshoot, I suspect the existence of a hybrid species,
covered with neither fleece nor hair, but developing a
new means of protection in "
A FAREWELL VISIT.
153
"In philosophy?" the young man inquired, with a
satirical accent.
"Thank you for helping me out," the minister re-
plied good-naturedly.
"Then it's all up with me," said Parsons. "I'm no
philosopher. All I know is that I was born with a
heart to feel, and a head that has learned how to put
two and two together. If these can't help me, I'm
afraid nothing can.
I think I will say good-by now,"
he ended abruptly.
"What's your hurry?"
66
your hurry?" The young man made a
hasty excuse. Well, good-by, then. We shall
expect to hear from you."
Henry Parsons walked back to the hotel perplexed
and sick at heart. He seemed destined to leave his
old home with all his dearest associations destroyed.
He hardly knew what it was he wanted, or felt
he had a right to expect, from his old friend; but
he was painfully aware of coming away from the
rectory more empty of hope and good resolve than
before.
There is generally less surprise in such revelations
of character than we are willing to admit. Some
little seed of distrust or discontent has found place in
the heart before it germinates and grows into the tree
of baleful knowledge. When he was younger, Par-
sons had not the experience to read correctly the
rector's character. He knew him only as an accom-
plished scholar and intelligent guide in the study
of classical literature. As he
As he grew in years he began
notice of many things, — the
to take disappointed
-1
154
A GIRL GRADUATE.
disposition to speculate on grave questions, without
apparent need to solve them, the careless tone em-
ployed in the discussion of serious problems, the
absence of any burdensome sense of responsibility in
the practical duties of his position. One of the first
tésts of youthful character comes with the loss of faith
in some ideal of elderly wisdom and goodness. Few
young men escape that period of introspective doubt
which questions the worth of those supports to con-
science and belief a later age knows it cannot dispense
with. But Parsons's nature was not of the kind that
loves to linger in the slough of callow scepticism.
He was too just and practical for that. Though it
was impossible for him to escape recognition of the
difficult side of life, he hated cynicism, and all of
those spiritually degrading notions which make up the
social philosophy of many of the present generation ;
hated them the more that he saw at times the possi-
bility of falling into them, if circumstances were only
sufficiently propitious, as, he scornfully reflected to
himself, they had seemed to be since morning. What
a contrast between his mood now and then. A few
hours ago, life had looked as easy as it was beautiful
and inspiring. Now a black tempest raged in his
soul. He had meant to leave Litchfield with only
tender and inspiring memories filling his heart, and
lighting the way into the untried future before him;
but he was destined instead to go away with every
ideal shattered, an intolerable load of pain and bruised
affection weighing him to the earth.
The minister, all unconscious of the effect he had

-
A FAREWELL VISIT.
155
produced, and unaware there was need that he should
produce one effect more than another, re-entered the
house, going into the sitting-room, where Bertha was
anxiously awaiting him.
"O papa! what made you let him go?" she cried,
as he entered the room.
"Let him go?" he repeated, in surprise.
"I am sure there has been some trouble," she con-
tinued, in a distressed tone.
"Oh, has there?" shrewdly abating his surprise in
anticipation of results.
"Then he has told you all about it? Do tell me,
papa; has she refused him?" The minister now let
his surprise appear in full.
“Come, come, this is getting interesting. Who is
she?"
"Why, Maggie Dean, of course.'
66
""
Maggie Dean!" he exclaimed, with a slight frown,
"do you mean that Henry Parsons is interested in
your friend Maggie?"
"Why, papa, didn't you know? They have been
lovers ever since they were children."
“And yet she has refused him, you say?" An
air of furtive embarrassment hung over the rector
during the discussion of this topic.
"No, it was you who said that," his daughter cor-
rected.
"I?" in a helpless tone.
"Oh, dear," she laughed, "neither of us said it;
only I am almost sure she has, and that is the reason
why he is going off in this way."
156
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Your friend must be rather ambitious, to refuse a
man like Henry Parsons."
"But, papa, I don't think she really meant it."
The minister felt it his duty to look very severe here.
"Do you mean that Maggie is a coquette?"
"Oh, no, papa," was the quick reply. "Maggie is
the best girl in the world, and I am sure she likes
him, only he is so impatient; and Maggie - well, I
don't believe she knows her own mind yet. Of
course she isn't obliged to marry him."
66
Perhaps not; but a girl like Maggie is hardly in
a position to be over-nice in such matters."
"I don't understand, papa," his daughter said
wonderingly.
"I mean she belongs to a class inferior to that
which Parsons would raise her to. Maggie is not
exactly one of your own circle, you must remember.
She is not likely to get a better chance than Parsons
can offer her. I hope my own daughter will behave
more wisely when her turn comes.” A faint shadow
of doubt crept over Bertha's face as she listened to
this. She did not always understand her father.
"I don't mean to have any turn," she answered
smilingly, dismissing unpleasant thoughts. "I mean
to stay and take care of you." He kissed and thanked
her, but it would nowise suit him to have his daughter
end her days in unsought spinsterhood. Bertha, re-
flecting on words of his, hesitatingly spoke again.
"It isn't Maggie's fault if she does belong to a dif
ferent" she paused a moment in troubled reflection.
"What class is ours?" she asked abruptly.
A FAREWELL VISIT.
157
"That in which culture and social breeding are the
passports to whatever privileges it seeks," was the
confident reply. She pondered this a moment.
"That is very nice," she murmured; then, looking
up at him again, "Yet we visit people who are
neither refined nor cultivated. There is Mrs. Briggs:
she has nothing but money."
66
Money is a qualification we have to put up with
when others are missing. We cannot always control
these things as we would like."
“And when one has neither money nor the oppor- ⋆
tunity for culture," she began, but suddenly changed
her course. "Do you think it is right," turning
another troubled look on her father, "dividing people
in that way?"
"I didn't divide them," he replied. "Neither did
I separate the vertebrates from the articulates. I
only know that the classification exists, and that it is
a convenient one. I dare say the trilobite thinks its
jointed structure as good as a backbone, but we who
are so fortunate as to have a spinal column can't help
thinking otherwise." Bertha laughed. She thought
her father very clever.
"Only it seems different with people," she urged.
“Of course we know that the trilobite doesn't really
care whether it has a backbone or not," she continued
artlessly; "but it seems very unjust when a young
man like Henry Parsons has to take a lower place
than Charles Foster, for example," the son of Judge
Foster, who had led a life of dissipation from early
youth. "To look at them, one would say it was
158
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Henry Parsons who had been well born and had
all the advantages."
“Yes, my dear, I don't deny that; and Henry will
win all the honors, you may be sure. In a republic
these things settle themselves. Every man reaches
his right level sooner or later." With this com-
fortable disposal of the problem into everybody's
keeping, the rector seated himself in a large easy-
chair.
"But I can't help wanting to hurry things a little.
There's Maggie, now, papa; her father is a working-
man, but there isn't a brighter girl in town than
Maggie. I love her so much."
"Maggie loves herself a good deal too, doesn't she?"
the minister inquired, in a peculiar tone. Neither he
nor Bertha had yet heard of last night's accident.
"O papa! I don't think Maggie is vain at all.
You should hear her sometimes in one of her blue
spells. She abuses herself without mercy."
"That's only another form of vanity, my dear.
Why does your friend abuse herself?"
"Oh, because she is impulsive, and has a quick
temper, and wants things she can't have."
"You mean she is discontented and a bit selfish."
"Oh, no, papa, I don't think Maggie means to be
selfish."
"None of us mean to be selfish, my dear; we only
permit ourselves to be so," stretching out his feet,
and placing them on a cushioned ottoman.
"And I don't know as I blame her if she is discon-
tented a little. I should be discontented too if I had
i
A FAREWELL VISIT.
159
to live as she does. Her home is so plain and unat-
tractive."
"Then, why doesn't she try to make it more attrac-
tive?"
"Well, Maggie doesn't like fancy-work. She
thinks it is silly. I don't believe Mrs. Dean would
like the house filled up with tidies and lambrequins.
And you know, papa, you say we have too many."
“That's because they are always falling out of
place," adjusting the square of embroidered lace on
the arm of his chair. "It's false economy when there
are more tidies than there are pins to fasten them to
something."
Bertha laughed again. "What odd things you say,
papa. You are just like Maggie. When I corner her,
she makes one of her absurd speeches, and I laugh
and forget my point." The rector received this with
a flattered smile. "Then, she is so quick; she sees
through everything." A slight motive of defence
prompted this praise of her friend, Bertha having a
dim feeling that her father did not like Maggie as
well as he once did. He had not paid her so much
attention of late.
66
""
"That is a dangerous quality in any young woman,'
said the minister, rising from his chair. "I feel safer
with people who have an eye for surfaces." He
moved towards his study.
“You needn't think you can escape that way,
papa," his daughter said, placing her arm through
his, and walking with him across the room.
"It's
easy enough seeing through you anyway; you are
160
A GIRL GRADUATE.
the best and kindest man in the world, though you
like to cover it up and pretend you are so cool and
philosophical."
"Why, I shall think I am your favorite father if
you keep on praising me so.'
""
Yes, that is it," she said, laughing, and kissing him.
"You are my favorite father."
He went into his study, and closed the door.
Bertha stood reflecting on the outside a moment.
She wanted to go to her friend at once, but doubted
if she ought to, and went reluctantly back to her
sewing.
The hours that still remained after he left the rec-
tory until train-time seemed of interminable length
to Henry Parsons, who spent them in restless roam-
ing about the streets. When evening came, and the
darkness covered him, he found himself, before he
was aware, on the bridge in sight of the house he
had left in such hot anger that morning. He had no
intention of seeking Maggie by open or accidental
means, but it was impossible to deny himself a last
look at the place. He had familiar acquaintance with
every object on the roadside, and recognized all the
old landmarks even in the darkness. In one place
was a broken rail in the fence which used to afford
passage-way to Maggie and him from the street to
the pastures beyond. Over yonder was the big elm
where they had often stopped to rest in the shade and
eat the remains of their school lunch. Farther on
was the old saw-mill, with the tall chimney and rem-
nants of broken machinery, which had excited his
1
A FAREWELL VISIT.
161
mingled awe and curiosity, when a boy, as the possible
home of ghosts; which he had not been so afraid of,
however, but that he had sought refuge there from
the home which contained a living apparition he
dreaded still more.
Down the road past the Deans' stretched a wide
extent of field and meadow which might have been
his, since it had once belonged to his father, but whose
value had been long ago squandered, and had now
fallen to a stranger's use. Henry Parsons did not
regret the rich harvest of grain, but the deeper loss
this one stood for had never filled him with more
bitter pain than he felt to-night; going mechanically
on his way, he stood in front of the little cottage
where he was born. It had long since ceased to be
habitable, and was now used as a storing-house by
one of the neighboring farmers. An untidy litter of
old boxes and empty barrels gave the place a forlorn
and deserted look. Parsons stood there, his head
bent forward on his arms above the board fence, and
gave himself up to despairful thoughts. How could
he ever hope to escape the effects of such a blot as
this? It was not a mere social stigma that rested on
him, but a moral blight. He had tainted blood in
his veins. He had not inherited his father's disgust-
ing appetite, but the animalism of that lazy, self-in-
dulgent nature had descended to the son, taking
another form. Brute instincts were at work within
him, which led him to as wild excesses of feeling and
passion as his father had yielded to on a more sen-
suous plane. He had gone to Maggie that morning
162
A GIRL GRADUATE.
with a fiery tempest raging in his breast, pouring out
all his anger and the low, mean feelings at work
within him, unmindful of the danger she had escaped,
and while she was still weak and half ill from the
shock she had received. Where he should have
shown himself strong and patient, he had behaved
like a vicious fool; where the chance had been offered
to stand beside and protect her against the malicious
tongues now wagging against her, he had wantonly
abused and thrown it away in order to give play to
his emotions of jealousy and anger. But what was
to be expected of a man of such coarse moral fibre as
his? It was only the rougher sort of virtue he was
capable of. Because he did not lie and steal he had
fallen into the way of thinking himself a fine fellow,
but there was nothing really fine about him. He was
essentially coarse and common. No man no gentle-
man, he said to himself, with stinging self-scorn
would have acted as he did.
For an hour he stood there in the darkness and let
the waves of remorseful shame and despair sweep
over him. On his return to the village he paused on
the bridge to look back. The lamp was lighted in
the Deans' sitting-room, and shone through the open
door. He could see Mrs. Dean stepping briskly about,
and a moment after his heart gave a great leap as
Maggie herself came and stood in the doorway, her
slim figure outlining itself in clear silhouette against
the lighted background. Could it be possible she
was thinking of him, perhaps expecting and hoping
his return? The next moment he would have acted
A FAREWELL VISIT.
163
on the impulse this wild, sweet thought inspired, but
she turned back again and closed the door behind her,
shutting herself from sight. He forced himself to
turn and go on his way. As he did so he saw a
woman's figure at the opposite end of the bridge.
The hour was late and the place lonely, and he
felt the instinctive dread with which she drew closer
to the bridge's rail on her side of the road. He was
walking quietly on, looking straight before him, when
he became aware that the woman had paused and was
looking back at him. At the same time a voice
spoke.
"Is that Henry Parsons?" and he knew it was
Helen Dean. He quickly drew near.
"You have been to the house?" she said. He
looked at her in surprise. Then she did not know of
the morning's visit. Maggie had said nothing about
it. What did that bode for him- good, or ill? He
could not tell.
"I was there this morning," he said, at length.
Then, after another pause, "I am going away to-
night."
"Going away-to-night?" she repeated, in sur-
prise. "I thought you were not going until next
week." He kept silent. "What is the matter?"
she went on, in a more urgent tone. "Has anything
happened?"
"Death and damnation have happened." He spoke
with none of that hot-headed emphasis which words
like these might indicate, but with despairful inten-
sity. His listener shrank a little away from him.
164
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Hush. What do you mean that you and Mag-
gie have quarrelled?" She recalled as she spoke her
sister's red and swollen eyelids at the dinner table.
Maggie had refused to eat anything and had gone to
her room, while her family, without saying much to
each other, had accounted for her behavior on the
ground of nervousness from the accident.
"Yes, we have quarrelled," he made weary answer.
"She has sent me away. She was very angry with
me, but justifiably so. I behaved like a fool. I was
mad with pain and jealousy, and when I thought of
her being with that man, and that she cared more for
him than for me, it made me wild."
"Is it Sidney Gale you are talking about?" Helen
asked, in a grave tone.
"He is a miserable coward," Parsons burst out,
with a return of the morning's fury, "a smirking
dandy, who has no more sense of honor than his hat-
band, who openly boasts of every smile and look he
receives from a woman.
""
These words aroused a new fear in his listener.
"What do you mean?" she asked, rather sharply.
"Maggie has been foolish, but she has done no real
harm."
"Do you think I don't know that?" he replied,
"but he,” striking his hand on the wooden railing at
his side, and with a passionate tremor in his voice, "I
hate him."
“Hush, do not be so violent. Maggie does not
care for Sidney Gale.'
""
"Are you sure of that?" he cried. Hope again
A FAREWELL VISIT.
165
sprang up in his heart. This accidental meeting was
to lead to the end of all his troubles, perhaps. Helen
would desire a reconcilement between Maggie and
himself, and would herself become the arbiter of
peace. But Helen offered to do nothing of the kind.
When she had questioned him and learned what had
occurred, she gave him some sisterly advice, earnestly
upholding his resolve to go away, which now showed
signs of wavering, and counselling patience.
"You are both young yet. Maggie does not know
her own mind, but I am sure you will gain nothing
by staying. It will be much better for you to go
away."
""
His disappointment was keen and nearly unmanned
him. "It is like death," he said, with a sob in his
voice, "to go away like this, not to see her again.
Look at me," he pleaded; "I have no one but her; I
am absolutely alone in the world.”
Helen waited a moment in pitying silence before
she spoke. "There are many lonely people in the
world," she said. "There is only one thought that
helps me, when I think of the troubles people must
bear, and that is that they can bear them. No trial
is put on us that we cannot support if we will. Some
people are so weak and selfish they will bear no form
of suffering with patience. You would not choose to
be like them. You would choose, I am sure, to rank
with the strong souls, who can submit to suffer if they
must."
The tall figure, standing with bent head before her,
heaved a profound sigh. The stormy elements within
166
A GIRL GRADUATE.
were slowly settling into quiet. She said much more
to him, words to the same effect, of wise and earnest
counsel, that rebuked selfish passion and shamed him
out of his childishness. He left her feeling that the
world was not quite so empty of human worth as he
had believed it to be a few hours before, and carry-
ing with him a sense of sisterly trust and sympathy
that warmed his heart. Helen was his friend, the
loyal supporter of his wishes about Maggie. She had
promised to write to him. He should hear about
Maggie and know what she was doing. The light
that had shone through all his life was not to be
utterly extinguished, but would still glimmer feebly
in the distance. He could not feel wholly desolate
and bereft of hope. In this tempered though still
grief-stricken frame of mind he boarded the midnight
train and was borne westward.
Maggie, lying restless and awake on her pillow,
heard it, listening until the last faint, rumbling sound
died away, not knowing its coming or going had
aught to do with her. The next day she received a
short letter, which read as follows: —
"DEAR MAGGIE- For that is what I shall always call you in
my heart. I behaved like a brute this morning. Nothing can
excuse those last words I said. I shall never forgive myself for
them, but I want you to know how thoroughly ashamed of them
I am, and that I would give worlds to recall them. I am going
away to-night.
"HENRY PARSONS."
.
CHAPTER X.
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
THE surgeon, to whose office Sidney Gale was car-
ried after the accident, examined his hurt arm with
a grave countenance, and informed him that it was a
case of compound fracture. The broken limb was
packed in plaster and the owner compelled to wear it
in a sling several weeks. Gale's principal feeling
over the accident was one of chagrin. He cared less
for the broken arm than for the necessity which com-
pelled him, in the care of it, to make a walking ad-
vertisement of himself every time he went into the
street. He would have preferred a broken leg, which
would have kept him safely housed from observation
until it was well, and people had had time to forget
the cause. He said to himself that he had paid
pretty dearly for his fun
that a broken arm was no
joke under the best of circumstances, and that it be-
came a bore and a nuisance when it had to be ac-
cepted as the climacteric event in a series of small pur-
poseless actions, which, though he bore himself with
the same air of smiling bravado as before, began to
irk and chafe him in the remembrance, besides having
the effect to dampen a little the feeling of popular
good will in which he had stood. He won sufficient
sympathy, however, to meet the occasion's demands,
167
168
A GIRL GRADUATE.
**
though it could not repress the disposition to chaff
and tease on the part of his younger acquaintances.
Gale bore this with less than his usual good nature,
and seemed at times in danger of losing his fine tem-
per.
He paid regular visits to the doctor's office, where
he was forced to listen to a good deal of elderly ad-
vice and wisdom that he felt no use for, until he came
to feel as impatient of the company of old men as
Hamlet, and, like him, set his youthful smartness to
work to avenge his boredom. Dr. Green was the
oldest practitioner in town, who had long since
reached the age of spectacled dulness. There were
many who did not hesitate to say that he was break-
ing down, and who had transferred their patronage to
younger and more enterprising members of the pro-
fession. Gale himself perhaps would have taken his
broken arm elsewhere had he been in a condition to
choose for himself at the time of the accident, not
because he distrusted the hands into which he had
fallen, but from an instinctive dislike youth feels to
close contact with the age of stoop-shouldered wis-
dom, gone a little beyond the ripening period and
sinking into decay. But Sidney Gale was less im-
patient with his physician than with Nature, who is
never in a hurry. That ancient dame was neither to
be placated by compliment, nor disturbed by his gibes.
and sarcasms. He made up for his failure here by
amusing himself with the doctor, turning the remarks
of that sober gentleman into such whimsical use that
the bewildered originator no longer recognized them.
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
169
He felt himself badly treated when, on one of these
professional visits a month after the accident, he was
told he must wear his arm in a sling a fortnight
longer, and gave vent to an impatient protest. The
doctor tried to pacify him and explain the situation.
"It's the right arm, you see," he said, in his delib-
erate tone, “and we mustn't be in a hurry. It takes
time for the fibres of a broken bone to knit themselves
together; it takes time."
"I thought it was the right arm," the owner of it
replied. "It generally is the right arm, isn't it,
doctor?"
The latter looked at him over his spectacles, wink-
ing slowly to take in the full measure of this difficult
question.
"Well, I don't know about that," he said, at last.
"I don't remember just what the books do say on that
point. But I think not," he added, in a hopeful tone,
as if the knowledge of a broken opposite member in
some one else might hasten the recovery of his pa-
tient. "There is the young lady who was with you
in the carriage. It was her left wrist that was
sprained, was it not?"
"Yes, I believe that's so," Sidney replied reflec-
tively, as if it was with difficulty he could recall the
exact nature of this other case; "but young ladies
are apt to be contrary, Miss Dean in particular, I
fancy. If it is the custom to sprain the right wrist,
that would be sufficient reason in her mind for select-
ing the left." He spoke with a little irritation here,
which his listener could not understand. The doctor
170
A GIRL GRADUATE.
had taken off his spectacles and was wiping them with
his handkerchief, while he looked with near-sighted
doubt at his companion. He belonged to the gener-
ation that was passing away, and the young man of
the period was a puzzle to him. His easy manners
and careless speech, sharpened with the cunning of
youthful precocity and tinged with daring cynicism,
was unlike anything he remembered in his own sober,
hard-working youth; and there were moments when
he doubted the superior usefulness to the world of
the new species. He had a suspicion that the young
man sitting before him, with an ironical accent and one
leg dangling over the arm of his chair, was amusing
himself at his betters' expense, though, in view of the
innocency of his own intention, this view was difficult
to retain. If it were true, he need not give his oppo-
nent the advantage of letting him know he perceived
it. A good way to escape injury in this world is to
keep ignorant of any one's desire to hurt you. The
doctor only murmured a half-articulate "Ah!" repla-
cing his spectacles and saying he did not know the
young lady very well.
"Then, you know her as well as those who know
her better, since those who know her best know her
least, in respect that they have yet to learn as much
as those who know nothing at all. Sounds like
Touchstone, doesn't it?" smiling, and swinging his
leg.
"Touchstone?" the other repeated, in an uncertain
tone.
"Historical character who lived in the sixteenth
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
171
century, in a place called the Forest of Arden, though
he wasn't exactly in the timber line either.”
“One of Shakspeare's characters, I suppose.
“Yes, there's something about him in Shakspeare.
Touchstone lived by his wits. A man could in those
days," with an aggrieved accent, "though he said he
should never be fully aware of his until he had broken
his shins against them. I hope he liked it better than
I do my broken arm.”
"You don't feel Touchstone's need of a sharpened
intellect, perhaps." The slower intelligence of the
older man was beginning to catch a faint spark from
the crackling flame of the younger's.
66
"Touch-
'We that
Oh, I don't know," was the calm reply.
stone wasn't such a modest fellow either.
have good wits have much to answer for,' he used to
say. And really I mustn't waste any more time here,
swinging his leg into position, and rising suddenly to
his feet. "There's another reason why Miss Dean
might have chosen the left wrist," lingering near the
door, and reverting to a subject that did not easily
leave his mind. “She doesn't have to write all day
in an office, and, having no especial use for her right
hand, could well afford not to injure it." Again the
venerable doctor looked at his patient over his spec-
tacles in blinking doubt as to the exact nature of this
remark.
"I don't know what my uncle will say when he
learns that I've got to keep my arm in this con-
founded sling two weeks longer. I mean nothing
against the sling, you know; it's a very good sling:
172
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
but he's pressed for help, and didn't more than half
like my breaking my arm anyway. Now, my aunt
feels differently about it. I really think I have done
her a favor by giving her a chance to nurse and pet
me a little more than my natural graces call for when
I'm well. I hate to tell my uncle, though, how long
I've got to keep this thing up," casting a discontented
look down at his bandaged arm.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," said the doctor,
"but, you see, a compound fracture of that kind"
“Oh, I'm as glad as you are that it's a compound
fracture," with gratified emphasis on the adjective.
"You mustn't think I don't understand the interest a
good patient ought to feel in such a case. I mean to
help you make the most of it; still, I shall be glad
when I get this plaster thing off my arm.
""
"You don't seem to get used to it," the doctor
said sympathetically.
By
"Oh, yes, I do; that's what frightens me.
George, I feel like Mary Anderson when she is turn-
ing back into Galatea-the stone woman, you know.
Good-by, doctor; see you later," and he swung him-
self airily out of the room.
Sidney Gale was quite honest in his resolution to
let the accident teach him a lesson. It was high
time he stopped his useless admiration for Maggie
Dean, and the sooner that little affair was dropped
the better. He still thought her the brightest girl in
town, but that made no difference. He meant to
marry his cousin, Laura Danvers; and since the
narrow code of village ethics ordained that when a
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
173
young man meant to marry one young woman he
should not take another out to drive without incur-
ring the risk of an overturned carriage and a broken
arm, he must submit to the ruling. He would let
Maggie entirely alone in the future, and put an end
to the chattering gossip that had been busy with their
names the past few weeks, which, he began to fear,
might injure his hopes in another quarter. This reso-
lution was the more easily reached that he had a
strong suspicion Maggie meant to let him alone.
Banishing useless regrets, he set himself steadily to
the task of thinking only of his cousin. To strength-
en this purpose, he got out all her photographs, taken
at intervals from the age of babyhood to the present,
and arranged them about his room. Gale was one of
those young men on whom girls' photographs rain
down like manna in the wilderness. They covered
the mantel and formed a frame around the mirror,
while the newest and prettiest ones did ornamental
service on small easels and brackets. All these
were religiously banished now, to make room for
his cousin's. Just at present, however, Gale got
but slight comfort from the likenesses of his young
relative, perhaps because he derived so little from the
original.
Laura Danvers had been a distant spectator of the
accident. Returning home, she went directly to her
mother's room. Her face was flushed, and she looked
both angry and humiliated. Mrs. Danvers was mak-
ing leisurely preparations for bed, having removed
the square of lace she wore instead of a cap, and
174
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
revealing the thinly covered piece of scalp it con-
cealed.
"Mother, can I go away to school this fall?" she
asked, the moment she entered the room. Her moth-
er turned from the tall dressing bureau and looked at
her in surprise.
66
Why, Laura, what put that into your head?
I didn't know you had got back. I didn't hear you
come in.
Were there many out to prayer-meet-
ing?"
66
'Say that I can go, mother," her daughter urged,
in an imploring tone. "I must go. I can't stay
here any longer." There was a distressed catch in
her voice at the end, which threatened to get the mas-
tery soon.
"Can't stay here!" her mother repeated, still more
surprised. "How strangely you talk, Laura! What
would your cousin Sidney say?
99
"I don't care what he says." Her breast heaved, and
the hot tears rose. "He has no right to say anything.
He is nothing to me. He" Here the proud girl
broke down. Her mother, alarmed and more bewil-
dered than before, tried to quiet her, and at last suc-
ceeded in extracting piecemeal the story of the even-
ing's accident. She listened with a face more puzzled
than disturbed, while she tried to soothe and reason
with her excited daughter.
"There, there, Laura, I am ashamed of you," she
said at last; "I dare say, Sidney can explain every-
thing. The worst thing a girl can do is to show a
young man she is jealous. You should have more
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
175
A nice,
pride, and I don't believe there is any cause.
pretty girl I thought her the night she was here."
"I know she is pretty. I never denied it," the
other said, drying her eyes with a shamefaced air.
"May I go away to school, mother?"
"Nonsense, Laura! It's two months yet before
school-time. You'll forget all about it by that time.
Did you say Sidney had broken his arm? How self-
ish we are to be thinking of anything else! Poor
boy! We must give him a room here and take care
of him. I wonder if your father has heard of it.
I'll send John to inquire.'
treaty.
""
"Mother!" the girl exclaimed, in anguished en-
"Don't have him come here," but Mrs.
Danvers had already stepped into the hall, and,
calling to a maid below, delivered her message.
“Laura, I am surprised at you; your cousin Sidney
too," she said reprovingly, as she re-entered the
room.
"Then, may I go and make that visit to Eva
Stearns? You know you promised." The reminder
that school would not open for two months had
served as a decided check to a purpose which must be
put into instant execution, to have any moral effect.
"Well, well, we'll talk of that to-morrow; but it's
very selfish in you, Laura, to want to go away now
just when your cousin is hurt and ought to have
some one to entertain and take care of him. There,
go to your room," as the girl opened her lips to
speak, "and bathe your eyes. I must get Sidney's
room ready in case your father brings him home.
176
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Good-night!" She bent down and kissed her daugh
ter, repeated her instructions, and with a slow, wad-
dling gait, left the room.
Laura felt that she was most unsympathetically
'treated, but, as the first angry emotion passed and she
grew more quiet, she was rather relieved than other-
wise that her mother had not taken things more
seriously.
Absorbed in the exercise of those motherly devices.
which the presence in the house of her favorite
nephew, sick and with a broken arm, inspired, Mrs.
Danvers forgot all about the outburst of jealous feel-
ing she had witnessed. She was one of those easy,
kindly disposed souls whose own nature has never
been stirred beneath the surface, and who pass
through life quite unaware of the emotive depths in
those about them. Her knowledge of her daughter
was comprised in the belief that Laura was a good
girl, rather shy and distant in her manners, not so
social as some of her mates, but sensible and to be
trusted. There had been a tacit understanding in
the household for years that Laura and her cousin
Sidney were to be married some day. Mrs. Danvers's
life had flowed in such an undisturbed channel that
doubt of any possible check or disturbance in the
young people's relations never crossed her mind.
Such a match would be most suitable; she and her
husband had been long agreed on this point, and the
friendly disposition of the two principals towards each
other seemed sufficiently assured. Laura was an
obedient daughter. Her cousin Sidney was a young
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
177
man who understood his own interests and had always
preserved a filial attitude towards his adopted
parents. Nothing seemed to stand in the way of the
peaceful consummation of the hopes clustering round
this young couple. If Mrs. Danvers had been con-
vinced that "the children," as she called them, did not
like each other, she would have regretfully admitted
they had better not marry; but she would never have
ceased to wonder why mere liking in such matters
cannot be controlled by other reasonable considera-
tions of prudence and general desirability.
Mr. Danvers had the average American business
man's pre-occupation in the work of money-getting
combined with entire trust in his wife's ability to
manage the concerns of the family. He made liberal
provision for the household, and left his daughter to
her mother's care and guidance. He had placed his
nephew in a good position, and given him to under-
stand that he meant to do well by him. So far the
latter had not disappointed him. Sidney had proved
a quick and competent assistant, though not quite so
ambitious as his uncle. He stood rather above most
of the young men of the village, in point of morals
and intelligence. Mr. Danvers would not be too
hard on a young man in respect to the first, though
the vulgar indulgences of some of his young ac-
quaintances offended both his taste and his judgment.
A man had little excuse, he thought, for not leading
a decent, prosperous life. He governed his own con-
duct with a few set principles, which he regarded as
so many paying investments in a life of industrious
178
A GIRL GRADUATE.
ease and accumulation. Untroubled with moods or
subtle questionings of any kind, owning a conscience
indeed, but which might rather be described as a slice
of shrewd judgment applied to the moral side of
things, Mr. Danvers stood first in the business
community where he lived. He was a good husband
and father, as the phrase goes, leading a life of un-
broken surface contentment with the wife who never
opposed him, and loving his daughter of course, con-
scious that she was of a kind that did him credit, but
having no more real understanding of her, or interest
in the motives and ideas of her growing youth, than
of the needs of the inhabitants of some foreign planet.
If any doubt had occurred to him about the mutual
fitness of Laura and her cousin to marry, he would
have brushed it aside as easily as a fly from his
horse's ear. If his nephew had been an ill-natured or
dissipated fellow, likely to make a wife trouble, he
would have opposed the marriage; but he was just
the opposite. Sidney would make a kind husband,
which was what a woman wanted, and a desirable
son-in-law, helping to preserve the pre-eminence of
the leather trade in Litchfield.
Laura Danvers was slowly growing into the knowl-
edge of the mental aloofness in which she stood
towards her parents. They loved her, she knew, and
indulged all her wishes, but she often felt lonely in
their society. Without brothers and sisters, she had
led a companionless life. She cared more for her
cousin than for any living being. That is not to say,
however, that she might not sometime care for some-
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
179
body else much more. It is an unusual thing when
the entire sum and quality of a woman's affections
receive their final test at nineteen. Laura Danvers
loved her cousin partly from the natural effects of
propinquity, and partly from the necessity of loving
that which is lovable. Sidney had come into the
family when both were young enough to form an
unrestrained friendship for each other. They had
lived together as brother and sister; but as they
grew older, and the knowledge came to them of their
elders' expectations, a fine veil dropped between
them, and the old free intercourse came to an end.
They seldom saw each other alone, and avoided each
other's society, at the same time that Gale began to
bestow certain attentions and outward civilities on
his cousin, which seemed to her only to create a
further distance between them. Laura felt herself
wronged, and in an unfair position, but would not
have known how to extricate herself from it even had
she been sure she wished it. In spite of her dissatis-
faction with her cousin and slight distrust of him, the
sense of ownership was still active. Hers was the
first claim, one he tacitly admitted, but the obligation
of a friend to be true to us is a poor substitute for
truth itself. Laura felt that her chances to win her
cousin's favor would have been strengthened by
nothing so much as an opportunity to break through
the intangible bond that united them, and place her-
self in the same independent position towards him
that other young women held. But the most difficult
obstacle in the way of the cousins' better acquaint-
180
A GIRL GRADUATE.
ance was disparity of temperament. Sidney Gale's
frank, easy nature, engaging manners, and ready wit,
were a complete contrast to Laura's silent and reflec-
tive disposition. She often felt her seriousness to
be a drag on her power of entertaining, and wished
she had the art other girls possessed, of meeting her
cousin on his own ground, replying to his gay non-
sense in kind, and parrying his comic speeches with
neat little sarcasms and repartees of her own. For,
kind and studiously polite as he always was to her,
the despondent conviction never left her that she
could do little to interest and amuse him, and Sidney
liked to be amused. He sought the society of lively
people as instinctively as the mote floats towards the
sunbeam. He was always the originator and main
actor in whatever piece of fun was going on at the
various social entertainments they attended together.
When he and Maggie Dean came together it was like
the play of two separate bits of flame which draw
near and unite a moment, then dart away in opposite
directions, only to reach out with coquettish grace to
meet and touch again.
Laura Danvers could have borne to see her cousin
laughing and talking with Maggie Dean, and openly
seeking her society, though the sight did not please
her; but what she justly felt she could not forgive
was the secret acquaintance they had been cultivating
in the afternoon walks on Taylor Street. It was nat-
ural, perhaps, that she should bring the main weight
of her displeasure to bear on Maggie. A sentiment
of repugnance and distrust had now risen against
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
181
her classmate. She had never permitted herself to
call Maggie vain or selfish, but she did not hesitate
now to pronounce her vulgar; an epithet that would
have bitten into Maggie's sensitive pride more deeply
still. The feeling of class distinction, which Laura
Danvers had held from childhood, began to strengthen
and formed an active element in her feelings at this
time. The point at which members of society in a
town like Litchfield draw the line between those
privileged to win its favors and unprivileged losers
is a curious and shifting one. Laura Danvers had
never attempted to settle this point, but she now said
to herself that, though Maggie Dean might be very
bright and entertaining, she had shown very plainly
the commonness of her origin and breeding in her re-
lations with her cousin Sidney. What better could
be expected of the daughter of a railroad mechanic
than that she should improve every opportunity to
push her way into a rank above that in which she
was born?
Laura Danvers did not stop to inquire
into the exact nature of a social prestige belonging to
a wholesale dealer in leather; she only knew that her
own position was one of acknowledged advantage
and superiority. Her father had attained wealth and
influence, their house was the centre of what was
known as the best society. Circumstances of this
kind have their natural effect in determining the
standards of conduct among those who profit by
them, and Laura Danvers believed it impossible
that she, trained to a careful observance of social
rules and conventions, could ever have behaved
182
A GIRL GRADUATE.
as Maggie Dean had done. Perhaps she was
right.
She blamed her cousin less than she did Maggie,
not only because of feminine jealousy, but because
he was a man. Young men could do things that
were not permitted to young women. This was a
part of the social instruction she had received all her
life, and had not yet learned to question. If her
cousin Sidney chose to amuse himself in such a way,
she might deplore his taste, but would not presume
to sit in any higher judgment. Only now, when his
folly had run to the extent of openly compromising
her, involving her in the same ridiculous exposure as
himself, her duty was to resent and punish such con-
duct. Her mother might invite Sidney to the house,
and nurse and pet him as much as she liked; the
daughter had thoroughly resolved not to help her.
She had been foiled in her wish to leave home, by a
letter from the friend she meant to visit, written on
the eve of the latter's departure for the East; but she
had not given up the project of going away to school,
winning at last a reluctant consent from her parents.
The gist of their conclusion in this matter was that,
as the children were too young to marry yet, Laura
might as well follow her wish and see a little more of
the world, as much as was to be obtained in a year's
course in a fashionable seminary, with expensive tui-
tion fees, each pupil to furnish her own fork and
spoon. Though there were still several weeks before
her departure, Laura began immediate preparations
for the new life awaiting her. The dressmaker and
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
183
plain seamstress were called in, and the work of a
new wardrobe begun, second in variety and interest
only to that of a bride's. In further preparation, of a
different order, and to keep herself out of her cousin's
way, still lounging about the house with his arm in a
sling, Laura reviewed her old text-books, and began a
course in German with Miss Graham.
Sidney Gale opened his eyes in puzzled astonish-
ment when he learned of his cousin's project, then
set himself to watch the proceedings going on about
him with mingled chagrin and amusement. At first,
he believed it to be only a whim, and that, when the
time came for her to go, Laura would find some ex-
cuse for remaining at home. But, aside from her
main purpose to get away from home, Laura had a
young woman's longing to try the unknown. She
really wanted to go away, to surround herself with
new scenes and people, to test and measure herself
with new standards and ideas. It gratified her, with-
out causing her to relent, that her cousin was so
manifestly perplexed, and even a little disturbed,
over her conduct at this time. She had meant to
punish him, and, for the first time in their acquaint-
ance, she was enjoying the taste of power. Hitherto
she had studied only to please him, but we must have
some power to displease if we would make an effec-
tive impression of ourselves on others.
"I don't see what you are going away to school
for," he said to her one day, in a complaining tone.
"I should think once graduating was enough."
"For some girls, perhaps," was her reply, "but
184
A GIRL GRADUATE.
when a young woman has opportunity for something
better she ought to improve it. I have always
wanted to take a finishing course.
""
"Oh, it's to be a finishing course. Now, I never
should have known but that you were finished
already. I judged you by myself, I suppose. I've
been feeling pretty well finished for some time," with
a sentimental look.
"I should think you would," with a glance at his
injured arm, relieved of the plaster now, and worn in
a silk bandage.
"I didn't mean that," he explained. "I-I meant
it was you who had finished me."
An angry red burned in the girl's cheeks. "I
wish you wouldn't make silly speeches to me," she
cried, “especially when"
"When what?" he calmly inquired, as she paused
abruptly.
"When they're not true," she impetuously ended.
Poor girl! If she had been less honest she would
have turned her sentence in another direction and
avoided the self-betrayal it involved; but that was
her difficulty with this nimble-witted cousin. He
was always, whether intentionally or not she did not
know, taking her off her guard, exposing her deepest
feelings in a manner that would have been cruel had
it not seemed so heedless, and all the time, she felt,
curiously watching her.
"I didn't know I wasn't speaking the truth," he
replied, not looking at her, idly picking up a card
from the table near by, and dropping it again.
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
185
He was not in the mood for very ardent love-making.
66 If
you think I wasn't utterly done up and laid on a
shelf when I heard you were going away, you know
nothing about the feelings of a man and a a
cousin.'
The last word touched her, and she replied coldly,
"Cousins are not required to have very strong feel-
ings, fortunately."
66
They should reserve them for somebody's else
cousin, you mean? That's easily done. I am cousin
to my cousin Blanche in Chicago, and you are the
cousin of that grown-up nephew of my aunt's who
was visiting here last spring. I can think of you in
that light, if you prefer. If you condemn me to take
that roundabout road, I suppose I must submit, even
though some one else does improve the opportunity
to step across lots and get in ahead. The roundabout
journey has this advantage, though, that it keeps us
longer on the way."
This was not exactly what he meant to say, and
was for Sidney Gale quite infelicitous. It seemed
to point very boldly to his leisurely methods of woo-
ing, and he shot a quick, apprehensive look towards
his companion to see if she resented it. But she
seemed to have only half listened and to be lost in
her own thoughts. Gale had occasion to reflect, as
he had before, on the increased susceptibility to bore-
dom a fellow feels when talking to a woman who
never seems to care about his odd and witty speeches.
He recalled the answering sparkle and ripple of fun
that ran over Maggie Dean's face when he talked to
186
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
·
her, giving vent to that spirit of impish drollery that
served as his familiar dæmon. It gave him a sensa-
tion of creeping paralysis to think of spending his
life in the company of a woman who never laughed
at her husband's jokes. To change the subject, he
took up a photograph, a new one his cousin had lately
sat for, and asked if she were not going to give one
to him.
"They're all promised," she replied carelessly.
"That's too bad," he said. "I wanted to complete
my list. Do you know I have all the pictures you
have given me hung up in my room?" in an ingra-
tiating tone. "There are thirteen.”
"I know you have a great many photographs,"
she said, with a satirical accent.
“There isn't another girl's picture among them,”
he quickly replied.
"Miss Dean doesn't photograph well, I suppose.'
""
This remark was followed by a portentous silence.
It was spoken without forethought and in direct
opposition to every previous wish and resolve of the
speaker. An evil impulse had seized her, and before
she could banish it the words had dropped from her
lips. Now they were spoken, she felt profoundly
humiliated and astonished at herself. She had never
meant to drop to that level. It is hard to account
for the contradictory impulses that sway us, where
the hasty, inadvertent speech we never really meant
stands as the measure of our sober feeling and con-
viction, bringing perhaps an honored friend's confi-
dence in us to a sudden tragic close and slaying self-
OF HIS DAY AND GENERATION.
187
respect at a blow. There is a streak of innate vul-
garity in most of us, which years of refined association
and high-minded endeavor cannot always keep out of
sight. It appears here and there in small, unsightly
touches that disfigure the soul's countenance as much
as a physical blotch does the real one. Laura Dan-
vers felt herself essentially vulgar and ignoble after
the words she had just spoken, but in the first seizure
of such a feeling we are less displeased with ourselves
than with the luckless spectator of our mistake, and
just now she blamed her cousin more than herself.
As for Gale, he was chiefly amused. This was the
first word that had ever been dropped in recognition
of a subject that lay like a shadow between them;
but, though his self-love was flattered, he was acute,
if not generous enough, not to display it. When he
spoke, it was apparently with the most open inten-
tion.
"Why should you be angry with me about that?"
he asked innocently. “When a girl asks a fellow
to take her to a friend's "- he stopped.
"I am not angry," she said, in a manner that dis-
puted her words. "It is nothing to me whom you
take driving." Then, with a little sting, "I didn't
know gentlemen told of such things."
66
They don't,” he replied quickly, a swift revulsion
of shame sweeping over him. "Besides, it's a lie.
I asked her to ride. I don't know what harm there
was in it."
"Nor I," she replied, with icy composure. In-
wardly, she was hurt anew and deeply, but she mas-
པཱ་
188
A GIRL GRADUATE.
tered her feelings, and the subject was dropped.
Each would have been glad to dispense with the
other's society; but neither chose to appear so, and
they stood together in an embarrassed silence, broken
by a fitful word now and then on indifferent topics,
until Mrs. Danvers came in, and Laura found an
excuse for leaving the room.
CHAPTER XI.
TWO WOMEN.
WHEN Maggie learned that Henry Parsons had
really gone, she was still too much under the influ-
ence of the exciting events of the past two days to
be deeply affected by the news, other than as it
increased the feeling of injury rankling within.
Irritated over the smaller hurts she had received,
she was not yet sensible of the real nature and
extent of the larger injury. Self-love lay stricken
in the dust; but honest affection, resting on sound
respect and the associations of years, had yet to attain
full knowledge of its loss.
Before this could come about, something was to
occur of graver and more startling nature than any-
thing that had yet befallen her, which was to com-
plete the sum of Maggie's spoiled illusions. More
than one little bubble of fancy had been destroyed
during the past week, but now something was to hap-
pen which would pierce deeper than to a young girl's
imaginary belief in things. So far, she had been only
vexed and chagrined by the disappointing turn of
certain events. Real unhappiness, Maggie had yet
to learn.
There was no hint or warning in the air of what
was to come. On the contrary, it was with a com-
189
190
A GIRL GRADUATE.
paratively light heart that, at the close of the day on
which she had received her letter, she made ready to
pay a visit to the rectory. She had been in a state of
restless discontent and depression all day, but now
her spirits had suddenly lifted. The dark-tinged
thoughts from which she had been suffering had
spent their force, and seemed to have resolved them-
selves into the sunset glow that flooded the little
village, sending long shafts of red light through the
tree-tops and across the house-roofs as she walked
along the street.
It is difficult to explain these sudden openings in
the clouds that cover our mental horizon, except on
the ground of the heart's natural right to happiness.
Maggie did not try to account for her changed mood,
only joyfully accepted it, following the first wish to
which it gave rise, to see her friend. She and Bertha
had not met for three days, a long period for a friend-
ship like theirs to sustain. She wondered a little
that Bertha had not been to see her and to inquire
about the accident. Of course, she had heard of it,
and would look grave over it. Maggie had made up
her mind to be scolded a little, even to admit that
she deserved it. But, though she might disapprove
of her, she was sure that Bertha would never believe
anything to her real injury. She was too noble to
listen to evil-minded talk. "Besides, she loves me
too well," Maggie said to herself, with happy confi-
dence, as, with a light heart and a smile on her lips,
she went on her way.
It was Mrs. Fay who first heard the news of the
1
TWO WOMEN.
191
accident, while on a round of parochial visits the day
after. She knew nothing before of Maggie's acquaint-
ance with Sidney Gale, the history of which was now
repeated to her in numerous versions, which proved
in themselves the large element of idle gossip enter-
ing therein. Mrs. Fay was, nevertheless, troubled
more than she liked to admit.
Nobody really believed anything very bad of
Maggie Dean. Both she and her family were too
well known for that. Thomas Dean might be only
a workingman, but native integrity and the quiet
industry of a lifetime had gained him as secure a
place in the esteem of his fellow-townsmen as the
judge or the minister held. The rules of plain,
upright living that governed the little household on
the hill were well known and afforded a prized ex-
ample in the community. There was no one who
understood this better than Mrs. Fay, nor who stood
ready to give evidence of this kind its due weight.
But there is a long line of mischievous effects, arising
from the mere disposition to relate our neighbors' mis-
takes, which is independent of any one's good or evil
intention; and it was this conjectural talk and wis-
dom the rector's wife had learned most to dread.
Mrs. Fay was a natural leader, both in matters of
opinion and of practical duty. Her clear and careful
judgment had unravelled more than one tangled knot
of social prejudice and mistrust. A strong sense of
justice, combined with large womanly sympathy, led
her to study all sides of a question and bestow help
where it was most needed. When she did not do
192
A GIRL GRADUATE.
་་
:
this, it was because she was prevented by another
will than her own. She was still in the early forties,
but there was an expression of care and matured dis-
appointment in her face that made her look older, so
that many thought her her husband's senior.
Rector Fay had hinted to Parsons something about
the flattering hopes his friends had entertained of
him in his younger days. The woman he had mar-
ried was one of these. Sarah Knowles had been gov-
erned in her choice by no worldly motive, only by
that fervent admiration, quickly growing into love,
which a young woman of earnest nature may feel for
a man of brilliant powers, apparently consecrated to
the highest objects. William Fay stood first in his
class, and his early preaching in one of the large East-
ern cities was marked by a graceful and fervid oratory
that produced an immediate popular impression. To
his pulpit ability he added qualifications of a lighter
but useful order; a distinguished bearing, a dash of
youthful spirits, and an amiable disposition. From
the score of beautiful and accomplished women he
might have selected, he chose Sarah Knowles.
Why?" she had often bitterly asked herself since.
She was neither so beautiful nor so accomplished as
many of the others, and her admiration for the pulpit
hero had been less openly expressed than theirs. But
a nature like William Fay's is quick to recognize its
own missing qualities in another, and even a more
modest man than he may discover when the full cur-
rent of a rich, strong, womanly nature sets itself
flowing in his direction. There had been a time
66
TWO WOMEN.
193
when William Fay believed a good deal in himself,
but that belief had not been supported either by
patience or a profound faith in the ideal.
No woman ever married with sincerer wish to pay
the utmost wifely honor where it was due than that
which prompted the nuptial responses of Sarah
Knowles. When she entered married life it was
with the inspiring belief that in this case it stood
for no ordinary bond, but for a companionship of the
spirit, devoted to the attainment of all good ends. She
had not lived through the period of the honeymoon
before she learned her mistake, and had to face the
knowledge that the man she had elected ruler of her
life himself required the constant anxious oversight
one gives to a fractious child. Where she looked for
moral support and guidance, she found herself con-
tinually obliged to correct and sustain, while in prac-
tical affairs she soon learned that hers was to be no
sweet woman's privilege of dependence. She was
not to lean, but be leaned upon by this gifted hus-
band, too much immersed in dilettante studies to keep
his accounts straight, and liking better to fill the posi-
tion of social favorite abroad than occupy himself in
the dull exercise of husbandly duties at home.
It is hard to say which is the severer blow a woman
receives at such a time, that given to her affections or
to her pride. Certainly, it is fortunate that pride is
there to sustain her. Another help came with the
birth of a baby daughter. The holy outlet of moth-
erhood was offered for the wasted love which other-
wise might have swept backward and ingulfed its
194
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
victim. Moreover, though the inspiration of wife-
hood was gone, its duties remained, the most sicken-
ing of which was to cover up that loss with an
unfailing outward habit of wifely allegiance. Still
more difficult did Sarah Knowles find it to bring all
the devices of womanly courage and cunning to prop
the failing fortunes of a man she was first to know
must fail.
For the popular idol soon began to wane. The
sermons of the young divine, which before had been
pronounced models of pulpit eloquence, were now
complained of as vapid and sentimental; and where
he had before figured as a spiritual Adonis in the
parlors of his wealthy parishioners, his presence came
to be accounted a weariness. Yet William Fay al-
ways had his admirers, people who talked of his sen-
sitive temperament, and spoke of him as an "orna-
ment" to the profession. He left his first parish
under no charge of incompetence or failing duty, and
for no more tangible reason than a slowly settling
cloud of discontent over the church. A few blunt-
spoken members did indeed explain the cause in un-
mistakable terms. "The Rev. William Fay has
'petered out," they said; but others were more dis-
creet, and said the pastor's health required a change.
There had been several stopping-places between the
populous New England city and his last parish. St.
Mark's was proud of its latest acquisition, understand-
ing that the new rector had at one time held a dis-
tinguished position in the denomination. He was a
fallen star, providentially dropped in Litchfield; and
TWO WOMEN.
195
stars, as we know, do not fall of their own accord.
The new incumbent had been careful not to disap-
point expectation by too zealous attention to his
duties, such as a young novitiate, anxious to win his
ministerial spurs, might have displayed. By observ-
ing a nice social exclusiveness, and writing sermons
a trifle above the comprehension of his listeners, he
was able to strengthen the opinion that they had an
unusual character among them.
William Fay was a man to whom all natural obli-
gations brought a heavy sense of weariness. It was
inevitable that, having married a woman, her constant
presence in the house should become irksome to him;
but, though he had long ceased to take any interest in
his wife, he relied on her in many ways, and even
affected a sort of pride in her. He called her his
Mentor, and talked about "my wife's conscience," as
being of a strict order that made it needless he
should exercise his own. No one knew so well as
she, on whom it was thus bestowed, the nature of her
Mentor's office. It is as difficult for a family to get
along with a single conscience as with a single fork
or spoon. Moreover, the dependence that springs
from moral inertness is the last to abandon whatever
other claim to headship it may possess, and two
decades of married life are not required to teach a
wife the returning seasons of marital authority.
Mrs. Fay could trust to her husband's indifference
in many things of deep concern to herself and so
escape opposition, but a trust so poorly founded can
provide no safeguard against accident and whim. If
196
A GIRL GRADUATE.
there was any principle that governed the rector's
conduct and opinions aside from a love of his own
ease, his wife had never discovered it, and it is im-
possible in such cases to forecast the point of view
from which the next disturbing event will be re-
garded; whether it be the loosening of a board on a
neighbor's fence, or a Lisbon earthquake, it is sure to
be construed into a new cause of self-injury. Thus
it was with many, forebodings that Mrs. Fay returned
home and tried to forecast the effect of the news she
had to relate.
Among others she had seen that morning was Miss
Graham, whom she met on the street. These two
women had always been mutually attracted, but cir-
cumstances had kept them apart. The limits of
social intercourse in a village like Litchfield are
drawn on many lines, and that which excluded Miss
Graham from a visiting acquaintance at the rectory
was religious dissent. Her independent views on the
Trinity and the first chapter of Genesis were well
known. She scorned to hold a pew in any of the
orthodox churches, and cherished a dream of organ-
izing a liberal society, keeping up an active corre-
spondence with radical thinkers at other points, and
being as well instructed in their ideas as they were.
She had organized an Emerson club among some of
the young people, and through the insidious paths of
literature tried to lead their minds away from a de-
crepit theology. Helen Dean was a member of this
club, and a favorite with the leader.
Miss Graham represented a feminine type that
TWO WOMEN.
197
excited the rector's strongest dislike. Mr. Fay pre-
tended no great hostility nor alarm towards the ad-
vancing theological scepticism of the day, being
almost as disinterested an observer of the movements
of thought as of the world's physical changes. He
felt as little inclined to reconcile Darwin with Moses
as to measure the earth's orbit with his surplice band;
but, though he was not greatly disturbed over mod-
ern liberalism, he disliked most of its living repre-
sentatives. He disliked very earnest people wherever
he found them, especially if they were women. The
motive which led him to seek the society of the oppo-
site sex and he sought it pretty often-was not
one the lively, upright spinster could respond to. He
went to men and books for ideas, such need as he had
of them, for he lived in that softer stratum of ideas,
called sensibilities; but man's need of woman, when
she did not happen to be his wife, was conceived in
the symbols of a graceful shape and bearing, height-
ened by faultless costume, a deprecating glance, and
soft hand that lingered confidingly in his at parting.
Miss Graham's eyes were not of the deprecating order.
Her direct glance and still directer speech irritated the
rector, while her odd dress and manners provoked his
mirth. It spoiled his appetite to sit down to the
table with a woman who wore a purple bow, and who,
in an excess of interest in the Athanasian controversy,
sometimes mislaid her fork. Thus Miss Graham and
the rector's wife always seemed to be looking across
at each other from widely severed points, though their
homes were but three squares apart. But their
198
A GIRL GRADUATE.
mutual interest and respect instinctively betrayed
itself in friendly looks and tones whenever they hap-
pened to meet.
"What is this I hear about Maggie Dean?" Mrs.
Fay asked, as the two women stopped to speak with
each other a moment.
"You've heard a pack of lies probably," Miss
Graham replied, in a somewhat higher key than
usual. "No, she isn't hurt much," in response to
another question; "not so badly as the young man.
There's a little justice left in the world, I'm thankful
to say."
""
"You don't like Mr. Gale?" the other said, with a
faint smile.
"I haven't anything against him. I've no use
for these bandboxy young men myself, with their
girl's complexions and little boots; but I suppose
the Lord has, or he wouldn't have made them."
The rector's wife did not quite like this manner of
speech, but tried not to show it. "I have always
liked Maggie Dean," she said thoughtfully. "She
is my Bertha's warmest friend. I should be sorry if
anything had happened to"
"What's happened?" Miss Graham sharply inter-
rupted. "A young man takes a young woman to
ride. The young woman wants to drive. I've
noticed that when a woman wants to hold the reins
herself, it is generally because she knows how."
"It hardly proved so in this case."
66
Well, I don't know about that," was the deft
reply. "It may be Providence intended a smash-up,
TWO WOMEN.
199
and picked out the spunkiest one to bring it about."
The listener did not quite like this remark either, and
changed the line of thought a little by remarking that
she hoped it would teach both of the young people a
lesson.
"It will teach Sidney Gale how to part his hair
with the left hand, perhaps," Miss Graham made en-
couraging answer.
"It will teach them both more than that, I trust,'
Mrs. Fay said earnestly. "I pay as little attention
to gossip as you do, Miss Graham, but if it is true
that Maggie has accepted attentions from Mr. Gale
when he is engaged to his cousin
"I don't know whether she has accepted attentions
or not," Miss Graham interrupted. "I guess there
isn't much doubt he's offered them."
"You mean that he is as much to blame as she, but
we know others do not look at things that way."
Then, it's time somebody taught them," Miss
Graham replied, with an energy that showed she was
ready to become a pioneer in that sort of education.
"See here, Mrs. Fay, you're a woman of sense. I've
always said so." The rector's wife smiled and thanked
her. "Here's the whole town stirred up over what it
calls a flirtation between Sidney Gale and Maggie
Dean. What is a flirtation?"
“It's a word I dislike very much, and should regret
to hear applied to the conduct of any young friend of
mine."
"That may be, but we've all been young in our day,
though I've about forgotten when mine was.
You
•
200
A GIRL GRADUATE.
might as well try to keep a pair of kittens from play-
ing together in the sun, as young people from enjoy-
ing themselves. Suppose he did walk home with her
from school, and suppose Laura Danvers pouted about
it-I've no patience."
"I know it's very trivial," the other murmured.
"Trivial! it's microscopical! It's smaller than the
smallest speck of dust under my feet. I know that
family well," Miss Graham continued, with increased
earnestness. “Helen Dean is a young woman in a
hundred, and if character amounts to anything in
this world, then Thomas Dean stands as high as
anybody."
"Yes, I know. I quite agree with you. They
have my entire respect." Mrs. Fay did not mean to
betray any patronizing feeling, but her companion
thought she detected it.
"I don't know why they shouldn't have our respect.
As for Maggie, I ought not to say it perhaps, but I
happen to know she's engaged to Henry Parsons; a
young man that can double up Sidney Gale, and put
him in his vest-pocket."
"Is that so?" Mrs. Fay asked, with a look of inter-
est. "I think I have heard something of that before.
I know Henry Parsons very well. He has studied
with my husband. Mr. Fay thinks very highly of
him."
Miss Graham received this commendation of the
individual in question to her further favor with
erect unimpressibility. "I hope it is true," the other
went on. "That gives a different look to the affair."
TWO WOMEN.
201
"I don't see how," was the stiff reply. Miss
Graham was a little offended with herself for what
she had said, and with reason, since she did not know
it was true. "It's a hard lot for a girl when she has
to fall back on her connection with some man to save
herself from unpleasant criticism. I don't know
whether she's engaged to Henry Parsons or not. I
haven't been asked to publish the banns."
"Well, we must hope for the best," the other
woman said, wearily.
"We must do something besides hope," was the
response. "Now, it would only take one or two sen-
sible, clear-headed people-women, say "— looking
steadily at the other, "to set this thing right.
should like to take this town by the shoulders and
give it a good shaking.”
I
"I wish you could, Miss Graham," with a gleam of
admiration.
"But I can't do everything. I can do the punish-
ing, but I can't do the persuading. It takes a softer
kind of woman than I am for that.'
66
""
Now, you are getting personal."
"I am always personal. You're the kind folks
like to listen to. They're not over-fond of listening
to me, though they're getting used to it. Then
you're the minister's wife; that makes a good deal
of difference with some folks," shutting her lips
together.
Mrs. Fay thanked her, but felt a renewal of certain
doubts which the presence of this acquaintance was
apt to arouse in her, and prepared to go on her way,

202
A GIRL GRADUATE.
י.
I
saying she would do what she could. She added,
with a slight accession of dignity, that she was sure
her husband would wish to see justice done to all
concerned. The two women parted.
"Lord help us!" Miss Graham relieved herself as
she went on her way. “There are worse things in
this world than being an old maid, and one is to spend
your days pretending you're a proud and loving wife,
when all the time you're dreading to know what
piece of folly or wickedness your precious husband
will commit next. I'm sorry for that woman."
CHAPTER XII.
A RUDE SURPRISE.
MRS. FAY was undecided whether to speak to her
husband of what had occurred, or leave him to dis-
cover it in some other way. It would seem as if she
attached less importance to it if she did the last.
The rector shut himself in his study after dinner,
where he remained until late in the afternoon, coming
out with a package of letters in his hand and taking
his hat for a walk to the post-office.
Mrs. Fay had said as little as possible on the sub-
ject to her daughter, relating the main circumstances
of the accident, and repeating nothing of the gossip
she had heard. Bertha was full of distress for her
friend, and wished to go to her at once; but her
mother had other duties for her to perform, which
kept her at home until nightfall.
"Sidney Gale! Did you say that she was with
Sidney Gale, mamma? How strange!" she murmured,
as her mother answered in the affirmative. Then, a
moment after, "I wish it had been some one else."
"That is a strange wish," her mother said.
"Yes, I know," smiling a little, "I don't mean just
that. I mean I wish it had not been Mr. Gale."
"Why?" her mother asked quietly, but observing
her daughter.
{
203
204
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Oh, because-nothing, only I thought that
Maggie — she promised "
Mrs. Fay saw that there was some girl's secret here,
which she was not to be invited to share, and forbore
to question further.
Rev. William Fay returned home with a clouded
brow, and ate his supper in silence. His walk had
been a disappointing one, for many reasons. One of
the vestrymen had met him and poured out a long
complaint on some matter of church government.
He had missed a particular letter he was anxiously
expecting from day to day; and, going into a book-
store to negotiate for a picture he had seen a few days
before, he found another purchaser had preceded him.
It was an etched copy of one of Corot's masterpieces.
The rector was known to have a rather nice taste in
this sort of thing. He could not afford the outlay,
but justified his decision on such points with a pecul-
iar process of reasoning. A man must support his
nature, he said. If his work is of an intellectual
order, he must feed his mind with its proper nutri-
ment, permit himself an occasional indulgence in a
book or picture with which to refresh imagination
and stir the mental currents anew; as a man of com-
moner order, like Thomas Dean, must eat the food
that shall build up brawn and muscle. He was gen-
uinely vexed at the loss of the picture, and it was
while he was irritatedly reflecting on this that he
heard the news of the accident.
The most trivial cause of displeasure, when it hap-
pens to be the final one in a series of vexatious
A RUDE SURPRISE.
205
events, often appears the most momentous, like the
last straw on the patient camel's back. There was
another reason why he was ready to make the most
and worst of any injurious fact or circumstance con-
nected with Maggie Dean, towards whom he cherished
a slight sense of injury he could not have explained,
yet which was sufficiently tangible to a mortified self-
love.
After the evening meal, Mr. Fay called his wife
into the study. First, he repeated the complaint of
the parishioner, pettishly remonstrating against the
necessity a minister is under to pay respectful atten-
tion to every word of paltry criticism and advice any
one of the members of his society chooses to offer
him, his ruffled dignity betraying itself in every look
and tone. She tried to soothe him, but with little
success. He did not mention his disappointment
about the picture, as he had said nothing to her about
his intended purchase; but he dwelt at some length
on the inconvenience he should sustain in failing to
receive the expected letter, and as the tardy writer
was a distant relative of his wife, his feeling of griev-
ance in this quarter was sensibly increased. Mrs.
Fay was used to finding herself the unsuspecting
cause of most of her husband's disappointments. If
the weather was bad, causing a smaller attendance at
church than usual, she was made to feel that a little
wifely forethought on her part might have prevented
it. It was not strange therefore that his next remark
should bear a thinly veiled charge against herself.
"There's a nice story going round town about your
206
A GIRL GRADUATE.
favorite, Maggie Dean," he said, thrusting his hands
into the velvet jacket he wore indoors, and standing
before her with a scowl on his handsome face. She
replied quietly that she had heard the story, but
deemed it of little importance.
66
Maggie has been foolish, perhaps a little impru-
dent, but we shall do best, I think, to pay as little at-
tention to the affair as possible." Mrs. Fay was too
conscientious always to be judicious. A more tactful
woman would have refrained from giving even so
slight a suggestion as this.
"That is like you," he said. "In your desire to
be generous to other people, you quite forget my re-
lation to the case.'
""
"Your relation?" she repeated, in surprise.
"As the girl's pastor, it is my duty to remonstrate
with her. Young women are getting more and more
bold nowadays. They put young men to the blush."
"Their case must be a sad one if that is true," was
the reply. Mrs. Fay now began to be seriously
troubled, though rather strangely so, for a moment's
reflection might have shown her how unlikely it was
that a man like her husband would ever voluntarily
trouble himself to perform a disagreeable duty. It
would indeed have been a hopeful sign in the rector
had he seriously contemplated any exercise of spirit-
ual fatherhood towards Maggie, even of a mistaken
kind.
"Surely, William," she said, in an anxious tone,
"you do not mean that you intend to deal with a
case like this. Maggie Dean is a proud and sensitive
A RUDE SURPRISE.
207
girl. I am sure there are much better ways of in-
fluencing her."
"But
"You would like me to leave the matter entirely
in your hands, I suppose," with a faint sneer.
there are a few things I feel competent to attend to
myself."
Again, if she had been less intent on the imme-
diate right, she would have let the matter drop. She
made no direct reply, but took up another line of ar-
gument.
"They are good people," she said. "Her father is
one of the oldest members of the church."
"Oh, we all know what a membership of that kind
is worth."
"It is worth whatever a good life and sincere
belief are worth," was the warm response. “I have
been talking with Miss Graham, and she says
"It's not of the least consequence what Miss Gra-
ham says. You make a strange choice of associates;
a free-thinking Amazon, a crack-brained fanatic and
revolutionist in petticoats. Don't tell me what a
ridiculous old maid like that thinks. I suppose it is
because she has had the good fortune to injure me—
coming into my church and enticing the young peo-
ple away, that you like her and quote her opinions."
Mrs. Fay sank wearily into a large leather-covered
chair and dejectedly rested her head on her hand. "If
you mean that it was through Miss Graham's influence
Helen Dean left the church"
"Let the other one follow if
seems to think as well of herself."
she wishes. She
This in reference
208
A GIRL GRADUATE.
to those unpleasant recollections his wife had no
share in.
"She is our daughter's nearest friend," she replied.
"I shall put a stop to that," the rector said, thrust-
ing his hands deeper into his pockets, and taking an
irritated turn about the room.
"Then, you will give Bertha the first real sorrow
of her life. She loves her friend. Moreover, I have
always considered the relation a beneficial one to
Bertha. Maggie has the brighter mind of the two.
Bertha's temperament is more sluggish.'
"A little dull, eh?" her husband said, with a sar-
castic accent. "That can hardly be, since every one
says she is remarkably like her mother."
"I learned to admit my share of dulness a long
time ago," the wife replied. This discussion, which
was doing more harm than good to both of them,
was fortunately ended by Bertha, who opened the
door and looked in at them, dressed for a walk.
"I thought I would run down to Maggie's now,
she said to her mother. The latter made no reply,
only looked anxiously at her husband, who stood by
the table, restlessly turning the leaves of a magazine.
A less scrupulous woman would have been quick to
seize the opportunity offered by this moment of inde-
cision, would have sent her daughter on her way, and
so prevented the thing she dreaded; but Mrs. Fay
was without the cleverness that knows how to man-
age people-husbands especially — which many
women boast of possessing. Very likely, if Mr.
Fay had not committed himself he also would have
A RUDE SURPRISE.
209
/
let the opportunity slip, for he was more fond of
projecting a line of behavior in his mind than of
following it, even when the consequences were not
likely to be disagreeable. Then he loved his daugh-
ter, in his way, and hesitated to give her pain; but
that other figure, sitting in the leather-covered chair,
silent and observant, irritated him, and he deter-
mined to carry out his purpose. This is the sort of
device a weaker nature often employs against a
stronger, showing a childish self-assertion, and spend-
ing all its force in a single inane impulse.
"Come in, Bertha," her father said.
"I wish to
speak to you. Take off your bonnet," he added, as
she came towards him with a questioning look on
her face. "I do not wish you to visit Maggie this
evening." She looked disappointed, but began to
untie her bonnet-strings. "You wish me to help
you about something, papa?"
"No, but I have something to say to you. Your
mother and I have been talking together," with a
glance at the sitting figure. "I am not at all pleased
with what I have just heard about Maggie."
There was a third listener to these words. Mag-
gie, coming up the rectory steps, had just entered the
adjacent sitting-room, and, through the open study
door, heard all that followed.
"You mean about last night, papa?
not intend anything wrong, I am sure.
care about Mr. Gale."
Maggie did
She does not
"My dear," her father replied testily, "it is
much more likely to be a question whether Mr. Gale
210
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
ト
​cares for Maggie." Here such a strong feeling of
revulsion seized Mrs. Fay that she half rose from her
chair to leave the room, then sank back in her place
once more, covering her face with her hand.
“A young woman has no right to lay herself open
to public gossip. When she does, she is no longer a
suitable companion for a daughter of mine."
"O papa! you do not mean that I am to give up
Maggie," his daughter cried. In the outer room
Maggie stood with bated breath and wide distended
eyes. Every particle of color had fled from her face,
and things seemed dizzily whirling about her. She
caught the nearest chair for support while she bent
eagerly forward to listen.
"That would be so cruel, papa," she heard Bertha
go on, in a trembling tone. "If she is in trouble, she
needs me all the more. And if she has behaved
foolishly or made a mistake, she will say so. She al-
ways does."
"Then I am to understand she is rather in the
habit of making mistakes?" her father inquired, in
mildly jocular tones, trying to relieve himself of the
unpleasant strain of the situation.
66
No, papa, not more than the rest of us; and Mag-
gie has much better ideas about things than most
girls."
C
"That may be, my dear, but I am the best judge
of a desirable companion for you. There are other
reasons why I do not think you have made the wisest
choice. When you were in school, it made little
difference; but now you should see for yourself
A RUDE SURPRISE.
211
the impropriety of selecting just that sort of person
for an intimate companion." Here the figure in
the chair clasped the arm with a strong nervous
pressure; while the young girl looked at her father
with pained and wondering face.
"But, papa, I love Maggie better than any one
else. She is not to blame that her father is-I am
sure my mother does not feel"
She stopped. Mrs. Fay dropped the hand that
shielded her face, and turned her eyes slowly on her
daughter, with an expression that the latter failed to
read, though it checked her. Rebuke, warning, en-
treaty; it seemed made up of all three, and a wan-
dering doubt crossed her mind, that had troubled her
once or twice before, of some impassable gulf of dif-
ference between these two nearest her.
"You cannot judge of a question like this. It is
not becoming for a young woman in your position to
make the house of an uneducated mechanic her favo-
rite visiting-place," the rector went on concisely.
"You should seek associates on your own level.
Would you like to invite Thomas Dean here to tea?"
"I don't know," his daughter hesitated. "I don't
suppose he would come." She felt the inadequacy
of this answer, and turned another beseeching look
towards her mother, who again sat with shielded
face.
“You need not behave rudely or unkindly to any
one, but you understand my wishes, and I expect
you to pay some regard to them. We need not talk
of the subject further." Unheeding his daughter's
212
A GIRL GRADUATE.
".
distress, and cutting short an attempted reply on her
part, the rector took his hat and stepped out of the
low French window into the yard below. The task
he had set himself had proved more unpleasant than
he had thought, and his dissatisfaction was increased.
by the knowledge that he had been obliged to assume
a very unheroic attitude in Bertha's eyes, wont to
regard him as a superior mortal. He had an irritated
wish to cut short a scene in which he appeared to dis-
advantage, and was a little angry with every one con-
cerned in it except himself. He felt the need of the
cool evening air to soothe his disturbed nerves.
Bertha sprang impulsively towards her mother.
"O mamma! is it true? Must I give her up?"
she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. “What
has happened? Why is papa angry?”
Mrs. Fay had risen and placed her arm about her,
hiding her child's face on her shoulder that she might
not look at her. “I cannot talk to you now, Bertha,"
she said, struggling to command herself. "You must
obey your father, of course. Hush, don't cry so. You
must be patient. There-there-I must go now,"
and she almost forced the weeping girl from her, and
hastily left the room by a door leading to the stair-
way, and to her room above. Bertha remained a few
moments where she was, still weeping, then, when
she had grown a little more quiet, took up her bonnet
and walked slowly into the sitting-room.
"Maggie!" she exclaimed, in sharp surprise, when
she caught sight of her friend. Maggie stood in the
same place, hesitating whether to fly or remain. She
A RUDE SURPRISE.
213
looked pale and defiant, and trembled like a leaf.
Bertha saw at a glance that she had heard all. "Are
you going?” she asked, as, without speaking, Maggie
gave her one long look of anguished reproach, and
turned to pass through the door.
"Am I going?" Maggie repeated, wheeling towards
her. "Am I likely to stay, do you think?"
"Then you heard-O Maggie! don't look at me
like that," and Bertha clasped her hands imploringly.
"I shall always love you. Papa did not mean I
might not love you, only he thinks-it is all so
strange —oh, I am sure everything will all come
right again."
"Your father only thinks," Maggie answered, with
heaving breast and flashing eye, "that when a girl
gets into trouble, and people who don't know her
blame her, those who do know her and could help
her should blame her too—especially if she happens
to be that sort of person.
6
9.99
"You mustn't say anything against my father,
Maggie," said the other tremulously.
66
Why not?" the injured girl hotly demanded.
"Have you never said anything against mine? You
look down on him because he works for a living, and
you look down on me.”
66
Maggie, I never did”
"But he is the better man of the two. He would
never behave so meanly as that. A minister, too,
who ought to be better than any one else."
"Maggie, I will not listen."
"Is that the kind of religion the Bible teaches?
214
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Is that what Christ taught? His father was only a
carpenter."
66
Maggie, you ought not to say such things.
wicked."
It is
"Wicked!" the other exclaimed scornfully. "I
shall grow wickeder before I get through, and it will
be your fault.
Then your father will say he did
right to separate us, and that I was not a fit compan-
ion for you." She turned to pass swiftly out of the
house, but Bertha's voice, calling to her in a distressed
tone, arrested her.
66
Maggie, Maggie, don't go away like that; don't be
angry with me. I am not to blame. I mean- of course,
I must obey my father." She broke down, sinking into
a chair and weeping bitterly. "But I shall always
love you," raising her streaming eyes. "And it makes
me so wretched, Maggie," her tears starting afresh.
Maggie looked at her a moment, and her own suf-
fering, sharp as it was, was lost in the sight of her
friend's. She stepped quickly to her side and threw
her arms about her. "I know—I know," she said
brokenly, her own tears springing forth in a sudden
shower, "you are not to blame, but it is the cruelest
and wickedest thing in the world. I hate such mean,
cowardly ideas, and I hate the people who hold them."
To save her life, Maggie could not resist saying this.
"But you are the best and dearest girl in the world.
I shall always think so. And you-you shall think
as well of me,” straightening her figure proudly. “I
will show people-I will make them ashamed of them-
selves." She clasped her friend impetuously to her
A RUDE SURPRISE.
215
heart and kissed her, then turned and fled from the
house.
Mrs. Fay, hearing the sound of voices from her
chamber, descended to the sitting-room. When
Bertha saw her, she sprang towards her.
“O mamma! Maggie was here — she heard every-
thing."
66
Maggie here?" her mother repeated, in sur-
prise.
"Yes, mamma, and she heard everything. Oh, I
think it is so hard."
"Maggie should not have listened," Mrs. Fay said,
catching at this little straw of misbehavior on the
other side.
"No, mamma, of course not," her daughter replied
penitently, "only almost anybody would. And she
is so hurt and angry. O mamma! do you think it
will kill her?"
"Trouble does not kill us, my daughter; it teaches
us how to live." She spoke these words of common-
place wisdom and encouragement in a despondent
tone, and her face wore a pinched look of care.
"But I don't understand it," Bertha exclaimed, in
tearful protest. "What is to become of Maggie if
everybody turns against her?" The words, "I shall
grow wickeder before I am through," still rang like a
fearful threat in her ears.
"Everybody will not turn against her," her mother
replied.
“Then, why should we? We ought to be the first
to stand by her. What does papa mean? Do you
216
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
think it is right?" lifting her head and looking stead-
fastly at her.
"Whatever your father thinks right we must do, of
course. Men see things differently. Your father is
- he thinks he is acting for your good. You must
obey him."
"Certainly I shall obey my father," the girl said,
with a touch of pride. "Only I can't understand.
If you would only talk to him, mamma.
You always
have so much influence with people." Mrs. Fay
turned heartsick away. A heavy weight seemed
dragging her to the earth, and a sense of moral
suffocation oppressed her. "Don't talk to me any
more to-night, Bertha," she said. "Go to your room
and bathe your eyes. All may come out better than
we think." Bertha obeyed, but reluctantly.
mother had been right in the warning she tried to
give her father. This was her first real suffering, and
was the cause of as much bewilderment as pain. It
had always been easy to obey her father before.
Her
There was another cause of dimly defined trouble.
Her mother she did not feel as her father did.
Bertha felt quite sure of this, though she forbade the
thought to take definite shape in her mind. It was
very hard, harder to understand than to obey.
Fathers were wiser than their daughters, of course,
wiser too, when need existed, than mothers- at least
that was what religion taught. Her own father's judg-
ment should be questioned least of all, since he was a
minister and recognized guide of opinion. Yet, com-
pelled to give up Maggie, Bertha knew she should
A RUDE SURPRISE.
217
never find or care to seek a friend so dear. Her
tears flowed faster at the thought, and wet the pillow
on which the tired young head was resting.
Her mother remained below, sitting alone in the
darkening shade of the summer twilight. An ex-
pression of heavy sadness rested on her face, and her
whole look and bearing bespoke moral defeat. Suf-
fering is easy to bear in a noble cause, and its fruits
of spiritual victory quickly won; but that borne in
the daily witness of petty meanness we cannot cor-
rect, but seem forced to share and to uphold, kills
aspiration and hardens the heart. A feeling of
wretched soul-discouragement settled over the rector's
wife, a tired distaste of self and the need of living.
The darkness, pressing closer each moment, fitly sym-
bolized the gloom within, yet had a friendly touch,
shielding her, and hinting a coming end and oblivion
of earthly troubles.
Outside, the rector strolled leisurely up and down
the garden path. Maggie Dean and her troubles had
dropped from his mind, troubled with no other regret
than for the lost etching; and occupied in calm,
sensuous enjoyment of the summer evening, filled
with the scent of garden-blooms, and a faint, warm
breeze from the south. From time to time the odor
of a mild cigar was wafted indoors.
CHAPTER XIII.
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
MAGGIE's friendship with Bertha Fay dated from
the entrance of both on the four years' course at the
High School. She had been very proud of this
friendship, and recognized its benefits. The rectory
was, in Maggie's eyes, an epitome of that world of
culture and refined manners she longed to make her
own. Books, pictures, relics of travel, and agreeable
conversation, made up an atmosphere her own home
was wholly without.
The rectory was a modest establishment, without
the signs of wealth, but Maggie cared nothing for
that. She had seen something of moneyed greatness,
that exemplified in the manners and establishment of
Mrs. Briggs, and knew how to estimate it. It was
the charm of cultivated manners, and the general
impression of social grace and distinction every one
derived from a visit to the rectory, that acted on
Maggie. She had profited much by this relation, and
until quite recently nothing had occurred to disturb
it. During her last year at school, Maggie had
formed more intimate acquaintance with her friend's
father, whom before she had but distant knowledge
of, holding him in extreme respect, both for his office
and his reputed learning and talent. It was he who
218
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
219
had examined her for confirmation along with Bertha.
As the two progressed with the higher branches, he
showed increasing interest in their studies, helping
them in their lessons, teasing and reproving both
together, until Maggie came to feel as free and secure
in his presence as in her father's, with a sense of com-
panionship she missed at home.
Maggie grew into young womanhood without expe-
rience of that stage of overgrown awkwardness most
of her mates, Bertha also to a degree, had to pass
through. From merry, unconscious girlhood she
passed to bright and charming young womanhood.
She was not a beauty, in the correct sense of the
term. Her nose inclined to lift upwards, and her
eyes, closely examined, were found deficient in color;
but faults like these were atoned for by a vivacious
disposition and a fresh, mobile countenance that gave
play to every variety of youthful emotion. The ele-
ment of personal attraction, which cannot be explained
by an eyebrow's curve or shell-shaped ears, was one
Maggie had possessed since childhood. Sidney Gale
had recognized it, and found it difficult to resist.
All her young acquaintances acknowledged it. Her
older acquaintances felt it also. Judge Foster be-
came sensible of it on graduation day, when he asked
for an introduction to her, and felt it anew every time
he met her, were it only for a passing bow in the
street. Mrs. Fay admitted it by bestowing on Mag-
gie a motherly interest and affection second only to
that Bertha received. The rector, also, had noticed
Maggie. He noticed every woman he met, either to
220
A GIRL GRADUATE.
condemn or admire, never looking at the first a sec-
ond time if he could help it, and looking at the others
a good deal. Once or twice, Maggie had caught his
eyes resting on her in a way that impressed her un-
pleasantly, before something occurred to deepen this
impression and to change her affectionate regard for
this friend into a feeling of rising fear and distrust.
The rector was a man of many accomplishments
and half-developed talents. He was a good classical
scholar, and could render valuable service to Henry
Parsons in the study of Greek and Latin writers. He
had some skill in verse-writing, and St. Mark's was
proud of a rector who could add to the interest of
anniversaries and other special occasions with an origi-
nal hymn. He was a good singer, lending a culti-
vated baritone to the efforts of the choir on Sundays.
He also had considerable skill in painting and draw-
ing. The rector, indeed, believed he had missed
his right place and calling in the world, and that his
true vocation was that of the artist, with a special gift
for ideal portraiture, combining Fuller's tender spirit-
uality with Boughton's grace and finish. He had
made a very pretty sketch in water-colors of Maggie
and Bertha, the two young heads bending towards
and lightly resting on each other, like a pair of open-
ing buds.
One day he was examining some botanical draw-
ings of the two girls, praising and criticising, adding
a line here, and deepening a shade there. They were
in his study, and the table was strewn with papers
containing the sketches.
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
221
“You take more pains with Maggie's, papa, than
with mine," said Bertha, in pretended pique, after
watching her father's lengthened attempts to correct
a not very successful representation of a thistle-
branch belonging to Maggie.
The rector replied with an easy laugh, raising his
eyes and fixing them on his young parishioner a mo-
ment in the way she had learned to dislike, and which
now caused the hot blood to mount to her cheeks.
"That is because your work is so much better than
mine," Maggie said, speaking lightly to cover her
embarrassment. A few moments after, Bertha was
called from the room. Maggie gathered up her
papers to follow.
"Don't go," said the rector, in a low tone, and
what she felt to be a disagreeably intimate one. He
was standing near her, and as he spoke laid his
hand over hers, resting on the table. It had a warm,
caressing touch, yet to Maggie it seemed to own some
viperous quality; for she drew hers quickly away, the
hot blood again surging over her face. Her young
eyes flashed indignant surprise at the man beside her.
A slight flush rose to his own cheeks, but he looked
less ashamed than annoyed.
"I beg your pardon," he said carelessly. 66 I — I
thought it was Bertha." Maggie took up her papers
and left the room without a word.
Afterwards, she was rather frightened at this exces-
sive treatment of one whose position demanded the
largest construction to be put on all his actions.
Away from the rector, she would contritely argue
222
A GIRL GRADUATE.
back a portion of her old regard and confidence in
him; but in his presence the old feeling of distrust
would again arise, and she avoided him as much as
possible.
As for the rector, he had been both amused and
chagrined at the little episode in his study; but
wounded self-love easily gained the mastery of other
feelings, and he ceased to take an interest in his
daughter's friend, all his after-conduct towards Mag-
gie being tinged with cold respect and supercilious-
ness. He seemed to have dropped acquaintance with
her, and if she became the subject of conversation at
the rectory, Bertha and her mother found themselves
obliged to defend her in unexpected ways against
various obscure charges and much slighting criticism.
Aside from this little cause of resentful feeling
towards the younger daughter, Mr. Fay's relations
with the Dean family had, as intimated in the conver-
sation with his wife, suffered some previous disturb-
ance.
Thomas Dean had been a faithful member of the
mother church all his life, inheriting his belief from
a long line of peasant ancestry on a tenant farm in
England. Ever since he came to Litchfield he had
been a regular occupant of one of the back pews at
St. Mark's, where he went through his part of the ser-
vice with docile obedience, and an expression of
childlike trust and gravity on his face, that fitly sym-
bolized the tranquil faith within. He did not always
understand the sermon, and made no attempt to settle
any intellectual problems involved in church member
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
223
ship. What he loved in church-going was the ser-
vice. He knew the responses by heart; and an acute
observer, watching him during the organ's solemn
appeal in the voluntary, or some uplifting chant,
might have noticed certain fine workings in the lines
of his face, as if a hand were gently sweeping over
the inner heart-chords.
His two daughters had been duly christened and
confirmed, and, until lately, all of his family had ac-
companied him regularly to church. But about a
year ago the older daughter suddenly ceased attend-
ance, and it became known that Helen Dean, through
the influence of Miss Graham and the Emerson Club,
had been led to replace the religious doctrines in
which she had been brought up with new and inde-
pendent views of her own. When questioned on the
subject, she showed no wish to evade matters, but an-
swered all inquiries with simple directness and an
undisturbed demeanor, going quietly on her way as if
nothing had happened. For that matter, it did not
seem to her as if anything had happened, since the
progress towards her present point of view, startling
as it was to others, had been most gradual and orderly
in its effects on herself.
There was no one who felt more satisfaction in
this affair than Miss Graham; but, with strange in-
consistency, she resented the idea that she had had
anything to do with it.
“Helen Dean is a girl who does her thinking with
her own head," she said: "she doesn't have to bor-
row mine. I may have had something to do with the
224
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
start she took. I loaned her some of my books, it's
true," with a peculiar smile; "I've loaned other peo-
ple books. If I call people's attention to a fine view
there is from a particular hill-top, I'm not to be
thanked for the breath they spend in climbing up
there to see it. Neither am I to be thanked for the
view: but I haven't heard of anybody that's wanted
to thank me much in this business."
Naturally, it was deemed necessary for Helen's pas-
tor to visit and remonstrate with her. Duties of this
kind Mr. Fay regarded as the most wearisome part of
his professional labors. He was in truth very little
interested in the personal views of any of his con-
gregation, still less in any young woman's views, and
least of all in a young woman's who really had any.
It also offended his official dignity that one of his
flock should enter on an independent study of topics
it was his province to instruct her in. The self-re-
liance which marks the behavior of the young woman
of the period displeased him whatever form it took,
the more when it assumed the right to question those
principles he was publicly pledged to uphold. Then,
he disliked controversy of all kinds, even, as he
would have said, with his equals. His love of ease
rebelled against the necessity of demonstrating, with
logical rule and formula, the soundness of those ideas
he was himself content to hold in the dolce far niente
of agreeable sentiment.
His interview with his former charge was not fruit-
ful of increased good feeling on either side, and
Helen disliked it as much as the rector did.
She was
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
225
without the youthful desire to proselyte or make good
her cause with wordy argument. She made little
attempt to defend herself to her old pastor, though
she recognized his right to question her, answering
his questions as intelligently as she could, and listen-
ing with respectful attention to the little homily he
had prepared for the occasion. When he pointed out
the snares and pitfalls that lie in the way of self-
confidence, she could only admit them and express
the hope that she might avoid them, acknowledged
her inexperience, and ended by saying that she de-
sired only to know the truth.
"That is the way youthful infidelity always talks,"
said the minister querulously. "Take care the truth
doesn't prove too big for you to handle when you get
it."
Helen colored a little and said she had not yet felt
overburdened. She wondered if the rector really be-
lieved in his own power to influence thoughtful opin-
ion with arguments of this kind.
Rector Fay next paid a visit to Helen's father.
This visit seemed more unreasonable than the other,
but he knew it was expected of him. He took the
direction of the railroad shop one afternoon when he
went out for his usual walk.
It is worth considering what the perfect manners
of the perfect minister would have been under simi-
lar circumstances. Rev. William Fay had a manner
that took on very significant changes in the company
of different people. To some he was the embodiment
of kindly courtesy, while others never came into his
226
A GIRL GRADUATE.
presence without being made to feel the boredom
which their society was inflicting on their spiritual
leader. There were also times when his manner had
an unusual brusqueness, coupled with a familiarity
that lowered the whole moral tone of the man. This
was when he was with those who had made them-
selves offensive to him in some way, or who were
his social inferiors.
"You should talk to that girl of yours, Dean," he
said. 66
Why did you let her get that nonsense into
her head about leaving the church?
It's perfect
folly, and a disgrace too."
The two men were standing in the open door of
the shop, the foreman in his soiled shirt and leather
apron, his large, rugged frame and face streaked
with grime, presenting a strong contrast to his gentle-
manly-looking visitor. The minister's words brought
a dull red into his cheeks. "I ain't afraid of neither
one of my girls disgracin' no one," he replied
slowly. "Helen may think she don't want to go to
church no more, but she's a good girl-she's a
good girl."
"Oh, that's all right, my man. Your girls are good
enough, of course; but when a young woman sets
herself in opposition to her parents and her minister,
it's time somebody interfered."
Helen ain't never set herself in opposition to her
parents that I know of," her father answered, with a
little obstinacy. "I don't say I ain't as sorry as any-
body that she's fallen out with her old ways. It
hurts me not to see both o' my girls settin' on the
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
227
other side of their mother in church, as they've always
done. I've set in the same pew now for twenty-five
years, and "
"Yes, yes, we all know you are a first-rate Church-
man, Dean. I've no fault to find with you; but these
new notions your daughter has got into her head, her
calling herself a rationalist and all that, reading infi-
del writers and quoting their opinions,—that's not
respectable, you know."
Well, I ain't a man who interferes with other
folks much when they're full-growed, even with my
own children; and, as for callin' hard names, I've
noticed it don't gen'rally make folks think much dif-
'rent. I own, though, I'm a bit troubled sometimes
about another thing. If the Church is the only means
of grace"-he paused, and sighed in a troubled way.
The minister stood looking down to the ground, mak-
ing holes in the charred earth with the point of his
cane, and did not offer to come to his parishioner's
assistance. He had a refined dislike of entering on
the too serious phases of a subject.
"But I can't help thinkin' we don't know all
about it yet,” the other went on, more hopefully.
"It's hard to see how God could make a world full
of folks, most of them wantin' to behave themselves,
with only one little doorway to get through. It don't
seem to fit in with my notions of him. Why, then,
did he make the rest o' things so dif'rent? -the sky
so big and peaceful-like;" the speaker raised his eyes
to the blue arch above, "and us humans so'st we
wouldn't hurt a fly if we could help it. It looks so
228
A GIRL GRADUATE.
kind of conterdictory, you know. I hope I don't
offend you, sir"
"Oh, no offence," replied the other lightly. "The
Church settles those questions. She doesn't hold to
the vulgar notions of the evangelicals. She gives
herself plenty of room. The Church is broad enough
for anybody, besides being one of the world's great
historical monuments." He paused. With any one
else he might have regretted the choice of the last
word, but with so guileless a listener as the present
one, it did not matter. The rector was not without a
little amusement on his own part over the ambiguous
praise which the term he had selected conveyed.
"I believe all that, sir, I believe all that," his lis-
tener respectfully answered; "an' I wish't Helen
could see as I do, but I ain't over-good at explaining
things." The old shadow of pained self-distrust
crept over his face. "Our children- they get
beyond us somehow; I don't mean less lovin' 'n
obedient, but they get beyond us." He ended with
another sigh. The minister looked at him curiously.
"There's a good deal of native sensibility here," he
thought, "though the man has the look of an over-
fed ox. I suppose a novelist might make a romantic
character out of him."
·
"But you're her father, Dean, and you say she's a
good daughter," he said aloud. "Then, if you told
her your wish in the matter she would heed it.”
"Yes, sir, she'd mind what I said if I thought best
to say it, but I hain't never cared much for that kind
o' mindin'. There's her mother, now," he added.
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
229
"Perhaps you'd better talk to her."
Thomas Dean
wished to pay the utmost respect to his minister;
but the situation was not an easy one, and work was
a little pressing that afternoon. "Mis' Dean is a
good deal spryer with her tongue than I be," he
ended, with a faint smile, as he bade his visitor good-
day, and turned back into the shop.
The rector picked his way daintily over the dusty
roadway. Mrs. Dean gave him a hospitable but not
too flattered greeting, and ushered him into the
apartment of state, rolling up the shades, and draw-
ing forth the big rocker. Mr. Fay rather enjoyed
his calls on this particular parishioner, whom he found
very entertaining for the space of half an hour, at the
end of which he began to grow a little weary perhaps,
but he had staid long enough then, and could take
his hat and go.
"I ain't no 'Piscopal myself," Mrs. Dean said,
when, after a few discursive remarks on the weather
and other introductory topics, the rector led up to
the main object of his visit. "I'm a Baptist,"
straightening her trim figure. "All the Weatherbys
is Baptists-born so. But when I marry a man,
she spoke as if this were as frequent a form of exper-
iment as the spring cleaning, "I expect to go to
his church, same as I expect to sit down to his
table."
""
"You set a very good example, Mrs. Dean," said
the minister approvingly. "Most women compel
their husbands to go to church with them.”
"I ain't sayin' what other women do, though I
230
A GIRL GRADUATE.
don't know but what it's just as well in the long-run.
I guess some of their husbands would hate the trouble
of decidin' where to go themselves. I don't pretend
to be one of the meekin' kind myself. Mr. Dean
generally knows my opinion."
"And sets a high value on it, too, I've no doubt,"
Mr. Fay replied, in a gallant tone.
His hostess's keen eyes rested on him a moment
as he sat there before her in a lounging attitude. It
was like pelting a piece of polished marble with balls
of cotton, trying to effect an entrance into the good
graces of this kind of woman with a compliment.
"Well, I ain't never heard him say how high," she
answered dryly. "We get along."
"But your daughter's new notions are even more
at variance with your way of thinking than with her
father's," the rector began again. "The Baptists
hold much stricter views than we do."
"I know they do," was the reply. "There ain't
much mincin' matters with the Baptists. I don't
know whether Helen's views are dif'rent from mine
or not. I ain't compared 'em to see." Mrs. Dean
would as soon have thought of conferring with her
daughters on some household matter, a new kind of
laundry soap, or the best method of preserving fruit,
matters which experience and native competency had
long since determined she should settle for herself,-
as to have discussed a question of religious belief with
them.
“Then you take no interest in your daughter's pre-
tended change of belief?" There was a little addi-
1
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
231
tional edge in the minister's tone as he put this
question. He was getting tired.
"Oh, some folks have to change. I don't happen
to be that kind. They say it takes all sorts to make
a world, though there are some sorts, it seems to me,
we could get along without. But there was never
much pretending about Helen. If she says she's
changed, she's changed."
"But if you are a good Baptist, you must admit
that there are very serious consequences involved in
such a change." The minister, as we have seen, was
not concerned about these consequences himself, but
he was willing to play on another's belief in them.
"Well, I guess I ain't never been much scared
about them kind o' consequences. Anyway, I
couldn't scare Helen. And I don't deny but I've
got a dif'rent notion of everlastin' punishment myself
since I've found out it begins here."
It was evident the minister was not to find his
needed ally here, and after a little further conversa-
tion the parochial visit was brought to an end.
"That man has got about as much backbone as a
willow sapling," Mrs. Dean said to her husband that
evening, discussing this visit. "Much good it'll do
him botherin' about Helen. If my girls had been
brought up Baptists, I'd answer for it but they'd
stay so. But he's your minister, Mr. Dean."
Her husband found food for new uneasiness in these
remarks.
"You don't mean Maggie's goin' to leave the
church, too," he said anxiously. The vision of the
232
A GIRL GRADUATE.
family pew quite bereft of the two youthful figures
that had helped to fill it, himself and his wife sitting
there alone, gave him a real pang.
"Maggie!" his wife exclaimed impatiently. "Don't
ask me what she's going to do. It's as much as ever
she knows she's in the church." Maggie had been
peculiarly trying that day, wanting a dozen things she
could not have, and opposing her mother in many
ways.
"But, as I was a-tellin' Mr. Fay, I hope I
ain't afraid to speak my mind when it's needed, -if
he expects to keep the young folks, he must do some-
thin' to entertain 'em. If he'd get up a revival,
now
"",
"Oh, but we never do that, you know," her hus-
band interrupted, with a slow, deprecating motion of
the head. ""Tain't the best kind of religion that's got
in them ways. There's too much 'xcitement and-
and—yes, too much 'xcitement," feeling the poverty
of words. "Now, there needn't be anything in reli-
gion to 'xcite a body."
"Mr. Fay's religion never did excite me much,"
his wife observed parenthetically.
"I don't want no revivals to keep up my belief in
what I've found out's good to believe in already. I'd
as soon think of gettin' up my appetite by swingin'
my arms, instid o' doin' my day's work."
"Well, you can't say but revivals do some good,"
Mrs. Dean replied. "They piece out the member-
ship. They had sixty-three new converts at the Bap-
tist meetin's last winter. The church was crowded
every night, and they had to bring in chairs. I ain't
SOME STEPS RETRACED.
233
heard of any chairs bein' brought into St. Mark's-
lately," with derisive emphasis on the last word.
""Tain't them kind o' things that counts," her hus-
band replied stoutly. "And religion don't come that
way. You'd think, to hear some folks talk, that reli-
gion was somethin' that always caught a man sudden,
when he wan't lookin', like a fit o' the cramps. Now,
religion ain't made to scare you; it's what keeps you
quiet and steady like. It gives you the feelin' o' bein'
at home in the world. Religion makes you see how
things are put together that elsewise you might think
had just happened. They all belong-little and big.
They're all His. He takes care of 'em." Thomas
Dean's voice sank, and his wife did not try to answer
him.
The words of the Sunday chant came into his mind,
with which he silently finished the thought so difficult
to shape in words,-"In His hand are all the corners
of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also."
CHAPTER XIV.
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
ABSORBED in her own affairs, Maggie had paid
little heed to her sister's withdrawal from the church,
except to regard it as part of Helen's queerness. She
did not share her sister's intellectual curiosity in some
matters. If any change were to be wrought in her
own opinions, it would be through the personal rela-
tions growing out of them. Now that she did not
like Rector Fay so well, she might fall out of the
habit of church-going. Helen's logical mind pre-
pared the way carefully before her, from sheer love
of inductive reasoning, so that when the time came
for action she knew what to do; but an emotional
creature like Maggie is destined to learn nothing
except by accident. Every new experience takes
the form of an overmastering surprise, either of joy
or pain. The progress of the two sisters typified very
well the two theories of the earth's development, the
continuous and the spasmodic.
There is no more poignant centre of experience
than a suffering heart, self-existent in misery. For
weeks, Maggie knew what reality lies in unhappiness.
Her world lay shattered at her feet. One disappoint-
ment had followed another, culminating in that disas-
trous stroke of fortune which brought her old prized
relations to the rectory to an end. Everything that
234
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
235
had happened before seemed like a mere mote of mis-
fortune compared to this crowning injury. She had
profited much by this association, though no one
seemed to notice it but Mrs. Fay.
!
It was impossible for the rector's wife to come into
superficial contact with any one, and she had grown
to feel almost as strong a sense of responsibility
towards Maggie as towards her own daughter.
Recent events had but increased this feeling, at the
same time blocking all expression of it. This was not
the first time the wife and woman had warred within
her. She pondered long over the problem of her
future behavior to her old favorite; but questions of
this kind are seldom settled by abstract reasoning, and
await the decision that comes with the first call to
action. Mrs. Fay met Maggie on the street a few
days after her last visit to the rectory. Maggie
flushed, and, raising her head, passed her old friend
without further sign of recognition, though the latter,
under some swift, unscrutable impulse, had stopped
and half extended her hand. The girl then heard
her name spoken in a quick, entreating tone, that com-
pelled her to turn.
66
Maggie, why do you treat me like this?" Mrs.
Fay said, drawing towards her and speaking in a tone
of gentle reproach. Maggie's cheeks were still aflame
with the burning feelings within, and her eyes
smarted with the effort to keep back the tears.
"Have I done anything to deserve this behavior
from you?" the older woman inquired, as the other
remained obstinately silent.
+
236
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Done anything? I should think enough had been
done," was the reply. The angry tears found vent
now.
"Have I done anything?" her old friend repeated,
in a low voice. There was the least possible empha-
sis on the pronoun, that caused Maggie's tears sud-
denly to cease, while she looked at her companion
with bewildered surprise.
"Not you, perhaps," she answered hesitatingly.
"But of course you think as he does," with an angry
flash of the eye.
"You think I am not a proper
associate for Bertha
you take her away from me
you"- A new rush of tears prevented further speech.
"Have I not always been a good friend to you,
Maggie, and do you believe that I would willingly
make suffer? But it is not always easy to do
what we like;-I mean," correcting herself, "you
should learn to trust your friends, and not judge by
- by appearances.
you
"I have trusted my friends too much, I think,"
was the impetuous reply. "It is time they trusted
me a little."
"When you have lived as long as I have, my dear,"
unheeding this, "you may understand how people
may have the best intentions and yet not be able - I
mean there are many things which determine our
conduct others do not know. We must trust each
other."
Maggie's grief was again cut short by surprise.
What was it Bertha's mother was trying to say to
her? She had never seen this strong, self-reliant
•
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
237
woman so discomposed before. Her eyes rose and
fell before the younger gaze fixed on her, and a pain-
ful flush colored her cheek. It was as if she were
reaching a hand to save her from some threatened
danger, while with the other she concealed some fatal
hurt to herself. Slowly the conviction rose in the
young girl's mind that Mrs. Fay did not share all her
husband's opinions; but sympathy for her friend's
difficult position could not overcome a resentful feel-
ing on her own behalf.
"Do you mean that
she asked abruptly.
him so?"
99
you do not feel as he does?"
"Then why do you not tell
"You should not speak to me like that, Maggie.
I have said we must trust each other. I trust you.
You are in trouble, I know, and trouble is hard to
bear, especially when we are young, before we have
- got used to it." She paused to collect herself, and
Maggie looked at her with growing wonder.
“There are different ways of bearing trouble, Mag-
gie. If we do nothing but fret over it and blame
others for it, we make it larger, and it makes us hard
and selfish; but if we try to bear it bravely and keep
to what we know is right, then nothing else can hurt
us much. We shall grow strong and learn how to
help others."
"You trust me," Maggie repeated doubtfully, as
the other paused a moment. "Then you do not be-
lieve”
"And that is what life is for, Maggie, to teach us
to help others," the other hurriedly began again ;
238
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"not just to get what is good and pleasant for our-
selves. Remember that, dear; and when things go
hard with us, and we think we are not justly treated,
that is a new chance given us to show what is really
good in us. Nothing has any power to hurt us, Mag-
gie, except our own wrong-doing." She paused.
Her voice had fallen into a solemn cadence towards
the last, and her eyes were fixed yearningly on the
young face, mystified and half alarmed, looking up to
hers. She extended her hand again, and Maggie
clasped it impulsively.
“Oh, you are good," she cried. "I shall always be-
lieve in you. But the rest-I will never forgive "
-she checked herself, pressed her friend's hand im-
petuously in both her own, then, abruptly dropping
it, turned and walked rapidly away.
The healing effects of this interview began to ap-
pear before Maggie herself could recognize them.
Out of her wrecked happiness something very pre-
cious was unexpectedly left to her. The old, sweet
belief in other people's goodness was not wholly de-
stroyed. Since her visit to the rectory, Maggie had
gone about with a feeling of hot outrage in her heart,
that overcame every other, nursing a vindictive anger
that threatened to consume her for its first victim.
Then came a period of stolid resignment and accepted
unhappiness, hard for the young to bear. The sense
of injustice, that at first carried with it the sting of
continually renewed suffering, threatened to settle
into a hardened conviction, and Maggie began to
support herself on that half-proud consciousness
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
239
of unearned cruelty and wrong which martyrs
feel.
Her friend Bertha shared this feeling to a degree.
The two did not see each other again that summer,
Bertha having gone with her father on the promised
vacation trip to Colorado; but they exchanged two or
three letters. Each had professed undying affection
for the other, and, in an exaltation of unhappiness,
submitted to the fate that separated them. There
was nothing on Bertha's part to check or imbitter
this high resolve. Maggie's was the real rôle of mar-
tyr-like faith and courage. It was hard to condemn
the father without letting a little of this feeling over-
flow to the daughter, and that Maggie was able to do
this showed she had something of her sister's power
of logical discrimination. She was not conscious,
however, of having given any severe reasoning to this
subject, and her continued faith in her friend was
rather to be attributed to the strength of her affection.
Everybody would not have said that Maggie had
an affectionate nature. She by no means loved every
one she met, a prevailing kindliness of disposition
sufficing with her, as with most popular favorites, for
the general need. Maggie's nature was too open and
joyous to be eaten up with narrow loves and hates.
She had never hated anybody, did not hate Mr. Fay,
only despised him. Another girl in her place, with
Helen's example before her, might have manifested
this feeling in an abrupt withdrawal from the church;
but Maggie took perverse satisfaction in a more regu
lar attendance than usual. She had a youthful feeling
ご
​240
A GIRL GRADUATE.
that her constant presence annoyed the minister more
than her absence possibly could, besides disproving his
mean opinion of her. It seemed to her at first that
the spiritual effects of church-going must be lost in
the rude disappointment she had suffered in the char-
acter of the officiating minister; but she was sur-
prised and rather pleased with herself to find this
was not so. The words of the sacred chants and the
solemn responses fell on her heart with a new force
and beauty all their own, quite dissociated from the
white-robed functionary in the pulpit. Maggie could
not quite understand this, and concluded she must be
more religious than she supposed. She found it more
difficult to give respectful hearing to the sermon,
where the speaker's personality became disagreeably
manifest; though she admitted to herself that the
abstract merit of a minister's discourses was quite
independent of the application revealed in his own
life and character.
To outward appearances, Maggie conducted herself
in her usual manner, entering into the summer gaye-
ties of the village in her old character of leader and
special favorite; but it was a double life she was lead-
ing. When she was alone, or when Helen was not
near, her gayety was apt suddenly to desert her, and
she would spend hours in profound study. A hun-
dred contradictory plans and ambitions filled her
mind. Unlike most of her mates, Maggie was un-
willing to spend her days in a round of empty cares.
She could not be always arranging her room or mak-
ing over her dresses. Just now she had that addi-
1
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
241
:
tional stimulus to work and the full employment of
her powers which comes with the desire to banish dis-
tressful memories. She would "show people," had
been the threatening words that closed her interview
with Bertha. She would work, she would study, she
would improve herself in a hundred ways. She
would be discreet and dignified, like Helen; she
would learn to say sharp things to people, like Miss
Graham.
In pursuance of these dimly defined ideas, Maggie
began a course of reading. As it would seem more
creditable if the subject were a hard one, she selected
Liddell's "History of Rome," saying she would read
four chapters a day. At the middle of the first volume
her resolution began to waver. She asked herself what
was the use of going on when she could not remember
what she had gone over; but that, she said, was be-
cause of the intolerable dulness of the subject. In her
resentment against the ancient Romans for ever having
lived to put on her the difficult task of learning some-
thing about them, she declared that she hated them all,
Numa and his nymph included. She wondered how
Henry Parsons could bear to read such things; and
then her fancy took a little excursion, and she found
herself speculating on what he was doing just now, out
there in Dakota. Was he still angry with her? She
hoped so, because that would help to keep her angry
with him. Discovering this new train of thought, she
brought herself sharply back to her starting-point of
the Roman Empire.
242
A GIRL GRADUATE.
She concluded to give up Liddell. History was
too hard reading for summer, anyway. Something
of a lighter order, in the poetic line, would be more
suitable. The next book she drew from the circulat-
ing library was "Paradise Lost," rigidly prohibiting
herself a selection of the nearer poets of her own day,
whom she really liked. It was not until afterwards
that she remembered Milton was another author of
Henry Parsons's reading. Maggie had not read the
modern psychologists, and knew nothing of the sub-
conscious action of the will. This coincidence once
discovered, she ignored it by saying that Milton was
a standard author, and she had a right to read him if
she wanted to. She soon began to doubt if she
wanted to. She liked the description of the Garden
of Eden, and her interest in Lucifer, the hero of the
piece, never flagged; but the theological discourses of
the angel Gabriel, during his occasional tea-drinkings
with Adam and Eve, wearied her almost as much as
the accounts of the early Tarquins. She concluded
that Milton was too much like the Bible to be good
reading for any day but Sunday, when all pastime is
of a wearying order, and one has a smaller sense of
guiltiness for falling asleep.
One method of killing time is as dreary as another.
Maggie wished sometimes that she cared for fancy-
work as the other girls did; but nothing seemed more
tiresome and ridiculous than to spend hours counting
the stitches in a piece of canvas. Life would be an
intolerable affair, she thought, if she must waste it in
a series of weak, ineffectual devices of this kind,
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
243
trying to cheat herself and others into the belief that
she was really busy. Had wider social opportunities
been hers, she might have been content with the ordi-
nary pursuits and pleasures that fell to her lot; but
Maggie had learned that the social homage and posi-
tion other young women gain through accidental cir-
cumstance, she must win for herself, if at all. Mag-
gie's ambition in this respect was not as vulgar as may
appear. It was not that she wanted to dress as well
as Laura Danvers, or lead a life of fashionable excite-
ment like Dora Briggs. She only wanted to hold a
recognized position among the best, and eighteen
should not be held to too grave account for its narrow
conception of the best. A slight circumstance, but
of considerable shaping power, occurred at this time
which had the effect to define certain feelings and cor-
rect some of her standards.
Mrs. Briggs, who led in the social vanities of Litch-
field, was to give a rather unique entertainment for
that backward community, combining the features of
an evening lawn party and a musicale. Maggie's
pleasure in her own card of invitation—heavily em-
bossed with the Briggs monogram, done in red and
gold—was innocently heightened by an accompanying
note asking her to contribute a recitation to the even-
ing's exercises, her local reputation in this line being
well established. Her gratified feelings received a little
check when Helen returned home, and, after examin-
ing the card, read the enclosed note. Maggie was
watching her, and her heart sank a little as she
noticed her sister's expression.
244
A GIRL GRADUATÉ.
"She pays you, I suppose?" Helen said, in a pecul
iar tone, as she replaced the note in the envelope.
"Pays me?" Maggie exclaimed.
"She pays Miss Graham for her music."
"And Miss Graham permits it?"
"Why not? What possible interest can Miss
Graham take in a woman like Mrs. Briggs?" Helen
asked. "She knows that it is her music and not
herself that is wanted, and music is her profes-
sion. She puts the money into the fund for the new
church."
"I
Maggie thought this last a very poor reason.
am not a professional," she replied, lifting her head,
66 and I don't care if she did invite me because she
wanted me to recite something. I think that is a
better reason than to be invited just because you
have money, as Dora Briggs would be if it were any-
where else." This argument seemed quite conclusive
while she was uttering it, but satisfied her less when
it was finished.
"Are father and mother invited?" Helen asked.
Maggie flushed crimson.
"You know they never go to such places." Helen
did not inquire if she herself had received a card, but
it was impossible Maggie should not now remember
she had not. She saw herself suddenly in a new
light, the willing recipient of favors not extended to
the rest of the household, but she was still too vexed
with Helen to be very repentant.
"I don't know why you should be sensitive if you
are not invited," she said, turning her irritability in
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
245
this direction. "You always refuse invitations when
you receive them."
"I am not at all sensitive," was the quiet answer.
"On the contrary, I should have regarded such an
attention from Mrs. Briggs as presumptuous."
66
66
Presumptuous?
Certainly. A woman who chooses not to recog-
nize me unless she is in the store and wants me to
wait on her, or at church, where it is her duty. What
have she and I to do with each other? She leads her
life and I lead mine. It would be intrusive on the
part of either to seek the other's notice."
Maggie listened wonderingly, but with a little ad-
miration also. The fact that Helen, the least ambi-
tious person socially whom she knew, a hard-working
book-keeper, could rest so calmly and securely on her
own judgment in matters of this kind, impressed her
in a new way. Afterwards, she was ready to ask her-
self why not, but just now she was still a little angry.
"It is easy to be philosophical when you don't
care about a thing. If I cared for nothing but
George Eliot and the Emerson Club"-
She stopped
with a dissatisfied expression resting on her face.
"I do not complain because your tastes are not
mine," Helen answered, she had many times,
Maggie thought, "but it is right to hold people to
their own standards. If you wish to go into society,
you must compel society to obey its own rules, if you
expect to win its respect. Mrs. Briggs should have
called on you if she wished to invite you to her
house.'
Helen answered,
246
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
"That is ridiculous," said Maggie.
"Of course,
she would not take that trouble. Besides, according
to your theory, she may be waiting for me to call on
her."
Helen refused to see any humor in this, and kept
a grave face.
"Going into society!" Maggie repeated. "I don't
call it going into society to go to Mrs. Briggs's lawn
party.'
99
"Then you have accepted?" her sister said, dismiss-
ing the theoretic side of the question.
66
Yes, I have accepted," was the rather shame-faced
reply, "but if it is any pleasure to you to know that
you have made the whole thing perfectly hateful and
odious to me, you ought to know it."
66
No, Maggie, it is never a pleasure to me to stand
in the way of your happiness. I wish you could be-
lieve that. I only wish you to cultivate right ideas
of happiness."
66
Meaning Helen's ideas?" Maggie asked, with
uplifted eyebrows.
66
No, the ideas which every self-respecting person
holds," was the warm reply.
66
Oh, self-respect is a quality that has been dimin-
ishing pretty fast with me of late," the other said, in
a hardened tone.
"Maggie!
""
Reckless words like these always raised extravagant
fears in Helen's anxious mind. She turned discour
aged away.
"Oh, if you feel like that about it, I will write
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
247
Helen
You
another note and decline the invitation."
pondered this solution of the problem a moment.
"No, that would only make matters worse.
could make no sufficient excuse." She began to fear
she had fallen into her old error of over-earnest-
ness.
She was always conscious, in these encounters with
her sister, of bringing a too heavy gravity of disposi-
tion to bear against Maggie's bright vivacity. She
was apt to overdo her part, and failed of adaptability
in her older sister's task of guardianship, as people of
very strenuous notions of duty and large self-reliance
are apt to do; but reflections of this kind generally
came too late. Maggie, seeing that Helen was in-
clined to shift her ground, now grew wilful, and
declared nothing would induce her to go; then re-
luctantly permitted herself to be persuaded, and the
little altercation ended with mixed feelings of triumph
and defeat on both sides.
She selected her piece and practised it assiduously
the next few days, then was seized with a violent
cold, and, after a day's ineffectual doctoring, knew
her share in the evening's entertainment must be
given up. She was not altogether sorry, and, as the
time grew near, was rather glad she was to attend
the musicale in the inconspicuous character of the
average guest. She put on her prettiest costume,
and betook herself to the scene of festivity. A large
number of guests had been bidden. Everybody would
be there, Maggie reflected. Sidney Gale, of course,
gay and unconcerned as usual; but him Maggie meant
T
248
A GIRL GRADUATE.
to treat with obtrusive coldness. Bertha Fay would
also be present, in her father's and mother's company,
doubtless, and Maggie's cheeks reddened a little at
this thought. Would Bertha speak to her, she won-
dered. Certainly she, Maggie, should not speak first.
And Laura Danvers, cold and repellent, would be
among the rest. Never mind, there were plenty of
others, Maggie re-assured herself, and tried to banish
painful thoughts.
Coming down into the parlor, she was greeted with
artificial friendliness by her hostess, a large, florid
woman, who looked warm and excited. She spoke
to Maggie, but only seemed to half see her, looking
beyond her to other guests coming towards her. The
young girl stopped a moment near the door, to await
an opportunity of speaking further with her. While
she stood there, she saw Bertha Fay on the other side.
of the room, who smiled and bowed constrainedly and
then turned to speak to her father near by. A dan-
gerous lump filled Maggie's throat, and a mist rose
to her eyes. Turning quickly away, she confronted
Sidney Gale, with his cousin on his arm, just entering
the room. They stopped for an exchange of a few
chaffing remarks between the young man and their
lively hostess, while Maggie, left awkwardly alone,
waited for them to pass on. Laura Danvers had
bowed coldly, and Gale had passed her with a non-
chalant nod that stung her to the quick. Seizing the
first opportunity, she made her way to Mrs. Briggs to
present her excuses for the failing recitation. Mrs.
Briggs stopped her high-voiced chatter, to a near
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
249
neighbor to stare at Maggie with displeased counte-
nance.
"Not recite!" she repeated, in an offended tone.
"How provoking! Of course, if you have a cold I
must excuse you; but I invited you on purpose for
the recitation."
A painful scarlet dyed Maggie's face, then retreated
and left it quite colorless. She drew herself up
proudly, and there was an indignant quaver in her
voice when she replied. Several people heard her.
"If that is the case; I had better take my leave at
once. I am sorry to have disappointed you, and will
bid you good-evening."
Looking neither to the right nor to the left, but
aware that she had created a small sensation and that
many eyes were following her, some with an amused,
others with a sympathetic look, she passed upstairs
to the dressing-room and down again without speak-
ing, and left the house. Her hostess stood con-
founded where Maggie had left her, her fat red coun-
tenance changed to deep purple. She began to talk
in a loud, strained key on different subjects; but it was
evident, even to her slow understanding, that she had
lost the sympathy of her audience. The story of
Maggie's abrupt departure was eagerly whispered
from mouth to mouth; and Mrs. Briggs and her
showily dressed daughter felt themselves subject to
volumes of unspoken criticism as they moved about
the rooms, trying to cover their embarrassment in
assiduous attention to other guests. Sidney Gale
was immensely pleased when he heard of the affair,
250
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
and secretly exulted over Maggie's conduct. Bertha
Fay listened to the story with flushed cheeks and a
feeling of sisterly remorse and compassion swelling
her heart. Her father smiled and shrugged his
shoulders. It was evident that the burden of sym-
pathy lay on Maggie's side, though she could not
know it, who lay sobbing in an agony of shame on
her bed in the little dark bedroom at home.
Mrs. Briggs had overreached herself several times
before as self-constituted authority in the social affairs
of Litchfield; and her rule, founded on vulgar display
and a brazen will, grew more and more irksome to her
subjects from this time on. People's instincts are
better worth trusting in matters of this kind than the
most carefully wrought system of drawing-room eti-
quette. Young innocence and worth stood its ground
in presence of the rude vulgarity that had attacked
it. People forgot the ridiculous little episode that
had set idle tongues wagging against Maggie for nine
days, and spoke of her now only to praise. Miss
Graham, it may be assumed, did her best to fan the
flame of this rising sentiment, delivering herself of
any number of sharp-pointed speeches and epigrams,
which kindly disposed people repeated to their prin-
cipal victim, who writhed under them as under some
species of physical torture. Miss Graham had a
peculiar kind of conscience. She would have con-
sidered herself poorly compensated for the services
she rendered Mrs. Briggs, in the check she had
received, without the privilege of as much outspoken
abuse as she chose to utter. Had the case been dif
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
251
ferent and her services gratuitous, she would have
willingly added one generosity to another, and held
her tongue.
Maggie's social ambitions had reached a sudden
climax, though that of revolt against the limitations
imposed in false and cruel customs was never out-
grown. She now saw very clearly that, missing those
accidental helps to social success which wealth or a
favored position bestow, she must either evolve these
helps from within or set aside their results in favor of
another kind, won by different means.
Maggie had no special theories on the sphere of
woman, and no ambition to solve any knotty problems
or point an example. Her young activities only de-
manded some kind of natural outlet. The range of
employments for women in a town like Litchfield is
very narrow, and Maggie had promptly decided she
would be neither a clerk nor a telegraph operator.
This left her almost no other choice than that of
teaching. Consulting no one, she presented herself
for examination, an ordeal easily passed; but when
she made application for a place in the village
school, she found her claims set aside in favor of
older and more experienced applicants. She made
up for this disappointment by a little extra crossness
at home; so that she met with less opposition than she
might when, a sudden vacancy occurring, the place
was offered to her and she accepted. Her mother
scolded and made loud complaint of Maggie's deser-
tion of her natural duties at home. Her father took
troubled note of all her looks and actions at this time.
252
A GIRL GRADUATE.
¡
It was all right that Maggie should teach if she
wanted to, he would have gratified every passing
whim of hers if he could, but he had an uneasy
feeling that if she were perfectly happy at home, she
would not want to teach. The problem was beyond
his solution, however, and it was with an increasing
hunger of the heart and a pained sense of self-defi-
ciency that he found himself farther removed each
year from an intimate knowledge of his children's
needs. He was not a close enough observer to know
that his was the case of many parents, due to different
causes, but meekly laid all the blame on himself. It
was that absence of book-learning, he thought, whose
loss he had not begun to miss until too late, that kept
him the silent, helpless creature he was.
Helen spoke no word, either to blame or to approve,
at this time, holding herself rather aloof from her
sister, and leaving her to herself; a privilege Maggie
would have been more grateful for but for an uncom-
fortable feeling that she was being watched. If she
were to show any sign of weariness, or flagging reso-
lution, Helen would be the first to notice it. Helen,
on her part, felt herself by no means so ready to pro-
nounce judgment, and watched her sister with puzzled
feelings.
Maggie entered upon her new duties apparently
cheerful and content. Six months had passed since
graduation day, and, looking back over them, she felt
surfeited with a certain sort of experience they had
gained for her. We may smile at this, and at the lu-
dicrously slight nature of the events and circumstances
PROGRESSING EVENTS.
253
which serve as landmarks in the history of a young
girl; but it does not require a Waterloo or the dis-
covery of a new principle in physics to explain the
changing currents of the human will and affections.
Maggie was at that point where, in earnest but ten-
tative fashion, she was striving to shape her life to
some inner standard of usefulness and beauty, out-
ward standards having proved so worthless; but if
the reader, impatient of results, skips the intervening
chapters to the concluding one, he will find no record
of great or startling things accomplished. Maggie
became neither a Madame Roland nor a Florence
Nightingale, nor, what may be accounted worse, did
her wishes ever take such lofty flight. She was only
fortunate enough to find a pleasant means of occupa-
tion, which contained the additional motive to its
pursuit, that by its means she was able to do good
service to others. To outward seeming, her life con-
tinued to flow on in the dull routine prescribed to the
village-school teacher. What new influences, as plain
and unexciting as any that have been related, were
yet to assist the young, growing soul to a better
knowledge of itself, await the telling.
CHAPTER XV.
THE EMERSON CLUB.
NONE of Maggie's family were able to determine
her feelings towards her rejected lover. The young
man's name was never directly mentioned to her, but
Helen did not hesitate to speak of him in her sister's
presence. She sometimes read portions of his letters
to her father and mother, Maggie, at such times,
taking pains to leave the room, or the same pains to
remain, feeling she made herself equally conspicuous
either way. The letters came regularly, and Maggie
wondered, in scornful fashion, what the writers found
to write about. She could not understand whether it
was a stroke of policy or native indifference that led
Helen to make such an open display of the letters,
keeping a package of them in one of the bureau
drawers they used in common, where they irritated
Maggie's vision afresh every day. It was absurd to
suppose Helen and Henry Parsons would ever care for
each other; though she did not know, veering about,
but that it might be a very good thing. They were
so much alike and could share all their hard, dismal
opinions together. Something happened during the
winter to set half-shaped thoughts like these at rest,
though not to allay an ever growing surprise in re-
gard to Helen.
254
THE EMERSON CLUB.
255
Standing by her chamber window one winter night,
when the rich moonlight gained a double brilliancy
in the wide reach of sparkling snow-crust beneath,
Maggie saw two figures coming down the street,
standing out in clear relief against the dazzling
brightness of the night. She took little notice of
them until they paused at the gate in front, when she
saw with surprise that one of the figures was Helen's.
It was the night of the Emerson Club, and this the
hour for her return. Maggie had always supposed
that her sister, whose independent habits were well
known, returned from the club, as she went, alone, and
puzzled her brains to conjecture who her companion
might be. She did not know any gentleman belonging
to the club who would be likely to receive her sister's
permission to escort her home. There were very few
gentlemen who attended the club. Besides Principal
Goodwin, of the High School, who had a wife and
family, and Mr. Sharp, a dyspeptic old bachelor of
the village, who would put himself out for nobody,
together with two or three young men, Mr. Goodwin's
pupils, Maggie knew of no representatives of the
sterner sex who profited by Miss Graham's attempts
to raise the intellectual standards of Litchfield. The
figure at the gate belonged to none of these. It was
a head taller than its companion's, and the two re-
mained standing there for what seemed to Maggie a
very improper length of time. She wondered at
Helen, and the whole thing struck her as most
strange and unaccountable. Then it occurred to
her that she must not stand there watching them;
256
A GIRL GRADUATE.
K
so she drew the curtain, and stepped away from the
window. As if in reward for this consideration, the
two people below separated almost immediately, and
a few moments after Helen entered the room.
Maggie looked at her curiously. A hundred sly,
tantalizing questions rushed to her lips, but she virtu-
ously repressed them, and but little was said between
the sisters as they made their preparations for the
night. Helen was looking unusually well, Maggie
noticed. There was a delicate flush on her cheek, and
a look of pleasant reminiscence in the dark eyes.
Her manner towards her sister was very kind, though
a fine shade of abstraction covered it and seemed to
raise a little barrier between them. Still keeping a
quiet eye on her, Maggie saw her take a letter from
her pocket, and, without looking at it, mechanically slip
it under the rubber band that held the package in the
bureau drawer. This gave Maggie a little shock of
displeasure, besides irritating her with a fresh remem-
brance of the letters. Helen did well to talk to her,
she said to herself. How was she, who was so much
wiser and superior, behaving? receiving letters every
week or two from one young man out in Dakota, and
presumably writing as many in return, at the same
time that she permitted some one else to accompany
her home from the Emerson Club and stand at the
gate talking a full quarter of an hour. She would
have found such conduct in her younger sister very
reprehensible, and in her, Helen, Maggie could only
consider it heinous. But she forbore to give expres-
sion to these feelings, though she lay awake long after
THE EMERSON CLUB.
257
her sister had fallen asleep, to speculate over this new
mystery, and the general unreliability of a world that
grew more irregular in its behavior every day.
For the next few days Maggie kept an observant
eye on her sister, until at last her curiosity overcame
her, and she addressed an abrupt question to her.
"What do you do at the Emerson Club?" Helen
looked the surprise she felt at this question from such
a source. For a moment her glance wavered a little,
Maggie thought, then she quietly answered that since
the holidays they had been reading John Fiske's "Cos-
mic Philosophy."
Maggie was baffled. She wanted to ask if that was
John Fiske she had seen at the gate the night before, but
restrained herself. She had never taken much interest
in the Emerson Club, chiefly through a girlish dread
of being considered "literary" and "strong-minded,”
terms of opprobrious meaning in a community like
Litchfield. She had always held Miss Graham in
half-fancied dislike. Her real feelings in this quarter,
however, were compounded of attraction and dread.
Maggie liked original people. Though she had never
felt greatly interested in Miss Graham, she liked to
draw near enough to watch and be entertained by her.
She had observed, however, that there were few who
seemed to stand in just this relation to the independ-
ent spinster. People either enrolled themselves on
the list of Miss Graham's adherents, making public
acknowledgment of their allegiance to her, or they
kept away from her; and heretofore Maggie had
obeyed the instinct that kept her at a distance. Now
I.
258
A GIRL GRADUATE.
a stronger motive was added to what had been before
scarcely more than a passing curiosity, and when the
time of the next club session drew near she boldly
announced a wish to accompany her sister.
The results of this experiment were not so satisfac-
tory as she had hoped. It happened to be a dull
evening at the club, with a smaller attendance than
usual. As Maggie could have guessed, Helen was
one of the most active members, holding the office of
secretary, and manifestly relied on by Miss Graham
in many ways. There was no one there she did not
know, and it was quite evident that her sister would
have no other company home that night than her own.
Once or twice in the discussion of the evening's topic
Miss Graham quoted the opinion of some absent
member of the club or visitor, whom she called Mr.
Norton, fortifying her opinion with his. Maggie
knew of no one in Litchfield by the name of Norton,
but a hint of studied abstraction in the secretary's
manner when his name was mentioned led her to con-
nect the name with the moonlit figure, that still stood
plainly in memory. On her way home she relieved
the forced silence of the last two hours by asking
several questions.
"Do you always have discussion after the paper?"
Helen said yes, and added that they considered this
the most useful part of the evening's exercises, since
it drew out and helped formulate the opinions of
those present.
"And does Miss Graham always point her pencil
at the one she wants to speak next?"
THE EMERSON CLUB.
259
"I never noticed," was the undisturbed reply. "I
think no one has ever objected to the pencil before."
"Oh, I don't object. You might not know she was
the leader but for that.
to have an opinion when
different opinion, I mean? Do you have to pay a
fine?"
What if you don't happen
she asks you for one
"Don't be foolish, Maggie.'
""
a
"I only wanted to know," in a tone of rejected in-
nocence. "But I suppose you could easily provide
against that in the constitution. What is Spencer's
'Unknowable"?"
Helen tried to explain as they went on together in
the darkness, and succeeded very well. She had the
gift of clear expression in the elucidation of themes
usually made doubly difficult by the labored obscuri-
ties of speech in which they are clothed. They had
reached the railroad tracks when she finished, and
were nearing home.
“Then, if that is all he means, why doesn't he call
it God,' as the rest of us do?"
"Because a philosopher, who is trying to establish
a new theory, must avoid all dogmatic forms of speech.
Every great system of thought has its own termin-
ology."
"Yes, I understand," Maggie hurriedly replied,
“but I should not call that a dogmatic term." They
were crossing the bridge, and the time was growing
short. "I did not know you were an evolutionist.
Who is Mr. Norton?" bringing this extraneous talk to
an abrupt pause, and plunging into her real subject;
260
A GIRL GRADUATE.
as a bird, after describing several wheeling movements
in the air, suddenly dives downward at his prey.
There was the least little pause before the reply,
and then Helen answered that he was a friend of
Miss Graham's, who lived in a neighboring town. She
added that he was a minister.
"A minister!" Maggie's surprise was quite nat-
ural, for Miss Graham's attitude to that class of peo-
ple was well known; and this feeling was not less-
ened by the discovery that the reverend stranger was
also an object of interest to her free-thinking sister.
Then a new ray of light broke upon her.
"What
kind of a minister?" she asked.
"He does not call himself by the name of any
sect. He is a rationalist. I suppose you might call
him a Unitarian.”
"Then, why doesn't he call himself that? Is he
going to establish a new system, like Spencer? I
suppose Miss Graham helped him to get his educa-
tion."
“No, indeed,” was the quick reply. Then more
quietly, "Miss Graham does not use her money for
such purposes."
"What purposes? You mean that she would not
help a minister?"
"It would not make so much difference about his
being a minister, if he were not a man.'
"Oh, yes, I had forgotten. Do you suppose that
story is true, about her having had a lover, and his
deserting her?"
Helen said that she did not know, and that the
THE EMERSON CLUB.
261
subject did not concern them anyway. She then
took pains to add that she did not think Mr. Norton
would be willing to accept assistance of that kind.
They had reached the house now, and passed inside,
making their way softly to their room, not to disturb
the sleeping father and mother below.
There was no one, in the community in which she
lived, who seemed to have very clear knowledge of
Miss Graham's early history. She had moved into
the village six years before, and lived alone, except
for the company of an ancient parrot she brought
with her. There were two versions of the story con-
nected with her name, which was now a very old one,
and which had ceased to excite attention, so that the
generation to which the two sisters belonged had
heard it only in disjointed extracts and casual remarks
and allusions, that whetted curiosity without gratify-
ing it. That version of her early history which her
nearest friends held was to the effect that when she
was young, and still lived on her father's farm outside
the village, Miss Graham was the betrothed wife of
one of the neighboring farmer's sons, a young man in
poorer circumstances than herself, but with good
mental gifts, on whom she had bestowed a share of
her private fortune to educate and fit for a profes-
sional career.
Miss Graham's friends went on to ex-
plain that during her lover's absence at a distant
college, and the period of her own forced loneliness.
on the farm at home, he had fallen in love with one
of the professor's daughters, and, with a suddenness
as selfish as it was cruel, had broken his engagement
262
A GIRL GRADUATE.
to his benefactress. The young collegian and the
professor's daughter were soon married, without any
attempt on the former's part to fulfil the material
obligations to his first love, which remained uncan-
celled until his death. For he died a few years after
his marriage, while still struggling to secure a foot-
hold in his chosen vocation, burdened with debt and
the increasing cares of family life. Miss Graham's
friends were strong in the belief that this early death
was a judgment, many of us being prone to discover
a deserved punishment in the painful circumstances
that crowd our neighbors' lives.
Those who accepted the other version of this affair,
friends of the young man, admitted the main facts as
they have been described, but covered them with a
host of plausible excuses. They urged that it was
not certainly known whether it was Miss Graham
herself, or her father, who had loaned her lover the
money. Her father had died soon after her betrothal,
without knowledge of its unfortunate issue, and was
not on hand to testify. They said, with scant appear-
ance of justice, that no one could positively assert
the debt had not been paid; to which Miss Graham's
friends promptly replied that, if it had been, Miss
Graham herself would have been the first to say so,
and exculpate the memory of the dead hero. The
other side then brought out its reserve of small shot,
trying to bruise where it could not destroy, and make
small windy apertures in the rock-cased integrity of
the deserted spinster. They premised the opinion
that it was a very indelicate piece of business for a
THE EMERSON CLUB.
263
young woman to offer her lover pecuniary assistance,
that where a woman threw herself at a man in
that way she ought to know what to expect. They
wanted to know if Miss Graham's friends expected
her lover to keep his word to her after his feelings
had undergone a change, and talked in a highly virtu-
ous strain of the danger of loveless marriages.
There is no action, even to the stealing of a set of
spoons by an alley thief, which does not admit of
some excusing word. If we do not like to suffer
from small depredations of this kind, why do we have
alleys for the thieves to prowl about and lie in wait
in? Many were inclined to make excuses for the
young man, on the score of the chosen bride's beauty
and high social position. They urged that, as Miss
Graham had money and the professor's daughter had
none, the recalcitrant lover had plainly not acted
from mercenary motives; to which the friends of the
first witheringly asked if the quality of mercenari-
ness was considered absent in the man who volun-
tarily acquitted his creditors of their expectant hopes
towards him, venturing the opinion that there were
many who would like to gain a reputation for probity
in that way.
The one person who had absolutely nothing to say
on the subject was Miss Graham. The thin, closely
shut lips, so marked a feature in her face when it was
at rest, seemed the symbol of an eternal silence.
Soon after her lover's desertion, she sold her farm and
moved into the village. She had never been pretty,
even in her youngest and happiest days; and now,
264
A GIRL GRADUATE.
when love's radiance, which has power to beautify
the dullest physiognomy, was stripped from her,
people began to notice how very plain she was.
Eyes that her lover, under the illusion of early court-
ship, might have compared to June skies, now showed
a lack-lustre quality, that made it impossible to de-
scribe them as either blue or gray, though a certain
piercing intelligence which they grew to acquire
served even better to mark their owner's individu-
ality. Her hair was of that yellowish tint which in
her earlier days was sometimes called golden, but
which grew thin and faded as the years went on, and
gave her, as she said, the washed-out look of a piece
of cheap muslin. Like most homely people, Miss
Graham made an unsparing use of the most uncom-
plimentary adjectives in describing her own appear-
ance; while some sinister motive led her to uphold
and further nature's aim in the outlandish costumes
she wore.
If Miss Graham had really wished to tone
down her unattractiveness, it would seem that the
native wit she showed everywhere else might have
led her to the selection of plain neutral tints and some
harmony of design and color, which even the most
favored of countenance need to consult.
As it was,
her dress betrayed such a mass of incongruous hues
and contradictory lines and angles that it was easy to
believe she had set reason at defiance, and sought only
to astonish and puzzle the vision of all who saw her.
"I sometimes wish," she said once to Helen, as she
stood before her dressing-bureau, combing her hair,
"I sometimes wish the Lord had given me a pair of
THE EMERSON CLUB.
265
eyes. You may as well wish you had handsome eyes
as a good temper, if you're going to spend your time
wishing." She was thinking if it were true, as her
favorite, Emerson, says, that "beauty is the mark
God sets upon virtue," Providence had made a sin-
gular oversight in bestowing on so useful a person as
herself an unfinished nose and a freckled skin. Miss
Graham was like Henry the Fifth, and never looked
in her glass for love of anything she saw there.
"You can buy hair," she added, flinging a small
switch over her shoulder, and fastening it to the thin
twist she called her own. "But you can't always
tell a person by the eyes," changing her tone to one
of cautious experience. "I've known people, women
mostly, who had eyes that would melt and conquer
you at a glance, yet who had no more heart than
this hair-brush," dropping that useful article on the
bureau. "I don't know how they do it, but they
know. No man can stand up against such a pair of
eyes, with their sly, beseeching glances, telling him
he is a god, every time they look at him. It makes
no difference if the owner hasn't got a thimbleful
of brains." Helen listened to this talk half pained,
half amused. She remembered having heard that the
other young woman had fine eyes.
"The eye is not such an expressive feature as we
imagine," she said. "I remember a game we played
when I was a child, where we covered the face, all
but the eyes, and tried to make each other out, but
we seldom succeeded. The most expressive feature
is the mouth."
e ||
266
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"The eyes will always get the credit," was the
reply. "And eyebrows," Miss Graham began again,
bending nearer the glass to examine the few pale hairs
that served as an apology for this missing feature. “I
have always liked eyebrows. I shouldn't care for the
arched and pointed kind, like those in the fashion
books; I don't want to be exacting, but no woman
likes to be all forehead."
"Dear Miss Graham, no one ever thinks about eye-
brows when with you," Helen said, with excellent in-
tention.
"No, I suppose not," was the dry response.
"I mean that you give us so much that is more im-
portant to think about," said the other, with some
embarrassment. "I should like to know who has
done more for the intellectual culture of Litchfield
than you have!"
"Well, that's the severest thing I've heard yet.
If the mental progress of this little seven-by-nine
town is to be laid at my doors, I'll emigrate. I went
into the bookstore the other day and inquired for
'The Light of Asia.' What do you think that mum-
mified piece of antiquity that keeps the store asked
me?" Helen could not say.
6
"Wanted to know if it was a scientific work. I
said yes,
that it was written to supplement Tyn-
dall on Heat'that if he would write to the Popu
lar Science Monthly' he would find out all about it."
"Mr. Reynolds is getting old," Helen said apolo-
getically.
"We're all getting old, but that's no excuse for
THE EMERSON CLUB.
267
lapsing into the helpless imbecility in which we were
born. People talk about second childhood, and there
are some who would like a third and fourth as ex-
cuse for doing nothing. I should like to know what
kind of a heaven such people expect to go to. A
place where they can return to the long clothes and
nursing-bottle of their infancy, I suppose."
Miss Graham thought a good deal about heaven.
She had a strong belief in immortality, fortified by
an ardent admiration for Miss Phelps, and a little
surreptitious practice on Planchette. Her belief in
the life to come was based, not on religious faith or
any hard-wrought philosophical conclusions, but
sprang solely from her passionate love of justice, the
need to project in imagination some future state of
existence which should atone for the ills and hard-
ships of the present. The righteous indignation
which filled her when reflecting on certain phases of
human suffering and wrong, impossible to right ex-
cept in a waiting heaven and a day of universal judg-
ment, was in spirit not unlike that which inspired
David's prayers for the destruction of his enemies.
Settling into village life, she had actively associ-
ated herself with the single branch of reformatory
presented in the temperance society, her strong, ener-
getic nature giving new impulse to the movement, so
that she soon would have become its recognized leader
but for her heretical opinions. When these were dis-
covered, there were much alarm and embarrassment
among her new acquaintances. This new ally was
altogether too valuable to be rejected wholly; and,
268
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
though they were afraid of her, prudence and Christian
zeal alike counselled the retention of one whose power
to help was so manifest, and who had a soul to save
no less than the worst inebriate.
When Miss Graham was tentatively approached on
the subject, her reply was equally clear and emphatic.
"Is it gospel temperance that I believe in?" she
asked, repeating her interlocutor's question. "" I
never thought to find out. I don't believe the gospel
will interfere with it, not according to my reading;
but if it did, why, so much the worse for the gospel, I
should say. You mean, do I think a man is going to be
saved from drink just because he repents and joins
the church? I should say no, though I don't deny
that joining the church ought to help him, but his
own will and reason have got to help him more.
gospel helps us to solve one end of the temperance
question, science the other. I prefer to put in my
work where it is most needed, at the scientific end."
Upon which it was reported that the new-comer was
a violent free-thinker, who placed the writings of
Huxley above the New Testament.
The
Besides her public labors, Miss Graham spent much
of her time in study. She was a voracious reader of
all sorts of books, including not only philosophy and
poetry, but fiction; for, in spite of her plain and
prac-
tical exterior, she was at heart as romantic as a girl
of eighteen. She was a diligent student of German
literature, and a master of that tortuous tongue.
She was also an accomplished musician, a pianist
with a masterly touch and rare power of spiritual
THE EMERSON CLUB.
269
interpretation; but in music her tastes were as nar-
row as in books they were catholic. She was a de-
voted adherent of the German school, and the object
of her most devout worship was Beethoven, under
whose lead other masters of other realms were for-
gotten, and music became the dominant passion of
her being. Miss Graham received a few pupils; but
they were not of a common order, most of the musical
aspirants of the village preferring the more popular
instructor, Miss Paine, who never offended her pa-
trons by affecting any higher standards than their
own. It required a venturesome disposition on the
part of any pupil to face Miss Graham and prefer a
request for her instruction.
"What do you want to study music for?" was
the first question with which she greeted the bold
intruder. "Because you really love it and have
some talent, or because you want to make a mere
show and ornament of it? If it is self-display you are
after, you had better keep your money and spend it
for ribbons and jewelry. They will set you off a
good deal better. Music won't set anybody off. On
the contrary, it absorbs and extinguishes you. You
can't use music as you would a corsage bouquet, to
help people see what a pretty young woman you are.
Make up your mind, if you want to study music, to
bury yourself alive to begin with. Maybe you will
be resurrected some day, and appear before the world
as a new Rubinstein or Rive-King, but the chances are
you won't. What I mean is, that you are to make
yourself as much an instrument of your art as the
270
A GIRL GRADUATE.
piano itself is. I don't say you are to forget you
have a soul, or to deny it a little passing enjoyment
of what you are trying to do; but, so far as other peo-
ple are concerned, or any interest on your part in the
effect you are producing, you should have no more
thought of that than the keys on which you are play-
ing. The true player ought to have but one wish,
and that is to efface himself utterly from the earth,
and leave only the impression of his music behind
him."
It is not surprising that all save a few were dis-
couraged at the outset, and concluded to go to Miss
Paine. Those who were brave enough to remain had
a further test put upon their courage by what the
instructor had to say next.
"Remember, I can't promise to teach you music
unless you promise to learn. You'll have to work,
and you must help yourself. I can't do your practis-
ing for you, nor spend my time looking up new ways
to keep you interested. I expect you to keep your-
self interested. All I intend to do is to keep watch
of you and to collect my pay; and you needn't expect
I'm going to give you Annie Lisle, with Variations,"
at the end of the first term, either."
6
Miss Graham took a few German pupils also.
Laura Danvers had been one. During her return
home one Easter vacation, Laura went in to see her
old teacher. She used not to like Miss Graham very
well; but later associations in her life at college had
taught her to understand the eccentric spinster better,
as well as to respect some of those ideas and princi
THE EMERSON CLUB.
271
ples which had once aroused only a feeling of lady-
like repugnance. She found Miss Graham balancing
herself insecurely on a step-ladder, and hanging a new
picture. The latter bade her visitor be seated, and
went on with her work, calling on Laura to tell her
when the picture hung evenly in its place. Then she
clambered awkwardly down. A stout servant-girl
was called to remove the ladder; and Miss Graham
sat down to visit with her guest, who went towards
the picture to examine it.
"Ariadne!" she said, reading the printed inscription
below the engraving in a doubting tone. "I don't
think I remember the story of Ariadne."
"If I was Ariadne, I should be glad you didn't.”
Laura turned an inquiring face towards her hostess.
"There was something about a spider, wasn't there?"
"You are thinking of Arachne.”
"Oh! Then I don't know anything about her.
Tell me the story."
"There isn't much to tell. Ariadne was the one
who gave Theseus the clew to the labyrinth when he
came to Crete to slay the Minotaur."
“Yes, I remember now; and he afterwards married
her."
"No, only promised," in a dry tone. "He thought
better of it, and on their journey back to Athens
deserted her while she lay asleep on the seashore.
That's Theseus' sail out there on the water."
The visitor examined the picture more closely.
“What figure is this coming round the rocks?"
"That's Bacchus," with an indescribable accent,
272
A GIRL GRADUATE.
which caught her listener's attention; but she did
not understand, and looked her wish for further
information.
"She took up with Bacchus, you know."
"Took up with him?
"Married him, I mean. Theseus was gone, and
Bacchus came along just in time to console her.
Before that, Ariadne had been walking up and down
the sands, wringing her hands and calling, on her
lover to return. Then she caught sight of Bacchus.
He was a merry-looking fellow, and wanted every-
body else to be as merry as he was. He set to work
to comfort her, and ended by offering to put himself
in Theseus' place."
"And she accepted him?"
“Oh, yes, she accepted him.”
"With Theseus' sail still in sight?" The younger
woman's voice sank in regretful surprise.
"Well, under the circumstances, you couldn't ex-
pect her to have any very tender feeling about that.
A man that would desert a woman as he did, when
she was asleep and under his protection
Graham stopped. She was getting excited.
""
Miss
"I wonder why he deserted her," Laura asked,
looking at the picture with a thoughtful expression.
"Didn't like the looks of her, I suppose, as she lay
asleep on the shore."
"Yet he was under obligations to her." A red
spot burned in each of the older woman's cheeks.
"But I suppose that would only make him dislike
her the more."
THE EMERSON CLUB.
273
"Of course; it was a very bold act on Ariadne's
part to rush in to help him in that labyrinth business.
A more modest woman would have let him find his
own way out, in spite of the Minotaur. I think she
deserved her fate.
9.9
"I don't think I should say that," Laura murmured
deprecatingly; "but I don't like Bacchus," turning
away from the picture and seating herself again.
"I suppose you would have had her keep true to
Theseus, in spite of that shabby trick. You girls are
so romantic."
"Not to the Theseus who did that," the other
replied softly, "but to what she first believed him
to be, her first trust in him; she might have been
true to that.”
“Umum.
um. Well, let Ariadne alone now. Tell
me about your school and that new room-mate of
yours. I don't know what I bought the picture for,
anyway. I'm sick of it already. I think I'll hang
it in the spare room upstairs." The talk then turned
to other subjects.
CHAPTER XVI.
GROWING HORIZONS.
HER visitor gone, Miss Graham wished to go to
her piano, but first approached the parrot's cage,
which stood in a corner, with a newspaper in her
hand. The bird seemed to read some hostile inten-
tion in this action, and began to flap its wings and
emit a series of hoarse, guttural sounds.
66
"Yes, I know; you always promise to keep still,
but you never do, so I shall either cover you up or
take you into the kitchen."
Polly settled down' on her perch with melancholy
resignation, and a feeble croak, which her mistress.
interpreted as an expression of choice.
66
Very well, then; I'll take you into the kitchen,"
and bore the cage away. Returning, she seated her-
self at the instrument. She was still a little excited.
Her hands trembled, but, strangely enough, she
played unusually well at such times. Some strong,
impulsive energy within seemed to find an outlet
in her fingers, that ran swiftly up and down the
keyboard, through difficult chromatic passages, inter-
spersed with intricate chords and arpeggios, executed
with a precision and brilliancy of touch that delighted
the performer and soon banished disturbed emotions.
The sense of empery is dear to us all, and the knowl-
274
GROWING HORIZONS.
275
edge that we have learned to do one thing fairly well
in this world is a great sweetener of human disap-
pointment.
Whatever Miss Graham did, she did with her might,
putting the whole of her vigorous personality into it
as long as the mood and occasion lasted. In music,
her soul, which elsewhere she compelled to walk
on its two feet, took wings, and she revelled in a
world of artistic longing and delight. She was
largely self-taught in music, and the critical in such
matters sometimes spoke slightingly of her efforts in
this direction. They said, in the cultivated musical
slang of the day, that she failed in technique. It was
admitted, however, that she had a touch. Her fingers,
resting caressingly on the keys, had power to evoke
that lingering sweetness and solidity of tone resem-
bling the organ's, with its superior combination of pipe
and pedal. Miss Graham was a musician of rare
power of expression, and a sympathetic interpreter
of the masters. She had studied Beethoven in much
the same way in which she had studied Shakspeare,
pursuing the composer's idea in the same just and
intelligent manner as the special author's under study
in the Emerson Class; only, as she explained to
Maggie Dean, the range of ideas in music is much
larger than in books. This was on the afternoon of
Laura Danvers's visit. She was in the middle of the
largo movement of Opus VII., its strong, resonant
passages filling the room, when the door opened and
Maggie Dean entered. She stood undiscovered a
moment on the threshold, then stepped noiselessly
276
A GIRL GRADUATE.
inside and seated herself near the door. Leaning
back in her chair, with a mischievous smile on her
face, she waited for the bit of fun that would ensue
when her hostess should look round and discover
her. This did not happen immediately, and Maggie
found herself obliged to keep very still indeed during
the pianissimo that followed. Maggie had no musical
instruction, and did not pretend to any great enjoy-
ment in what was going on; but she liked to watch
Miss Graham. The player's complete absorption,
and a certain rapt intensity of expression that illu-
minated her face, struck her with a little amusement,
then with respectful wonder. At the same time, the
music, though she did not understand it, began to
have an effect on her. In a confused way, she per-
ceived that here was a new power and influence at
work, which she did not understand. She felt her-
self subject to a force she could not define; and it
was plain that Miss Graham was tenfold more subject
to it, but gladly and comprehendingly, while Maggie
had a half-irritated sense of being held captive against
her will. The music seemed trying to say something
to her, which she could not comprehend, much less
respond to. She had heard Miss Graham play before,
but never under circumstances that compelled her to
notice or think about it; and she was in the right
mood for listening, being a little tired and downcast
from her day's work in school, which had not gone
just to suit her. The smile died out on her face, a
more pensive expression took its place, and Maggie
was lost in a dreamful reverie, broken only by the
closing chords.
GROWING HORIZONS.
277
Miss Graham, slowly turning on her stool, saw her
visitor and gave an exclamation of surprise. Maggie
rose and explained her errand, which was to deliver
a message from Helen. Her business finished, she
seemed loath to go, casting an interested look at
the piano, where Miss Graham still sat, unsteadily
balancing herself on the stool.
"I am sorry I interrupted you," she said.
"That is just what you didn't do," the other re-
plied, in an approving tone.
"But I'm afraid you
found it rather tiresome waiting."
“Not at all,” said Maggie politely. "On the con-
trary, I was hoping you would go on.
66
on."
Why, do you like music?" Miss Graham asked,
bending a scrutinizing look on her through her glasses.
"Helen doesn't. Now, don't tell me you adore' it."
'I don't know anything about it," was the candid
reply. "But I have always felt I ought to know
something about it, and I'm sure there is something
worth knowing."
"That's quite an admission." Miss Graham wheeled
her stool about, and turned the leaves of the book be-
fore her. "I will play Opus X. for you," she said.
This was about as intelligible to Maggie as if she
had expressed her intention in terms of the Hebrew
Cabala. Not knowing what else to say, she asked
the composer's name. Miss Graham stared at her,
as if she had asked the name of the ruling president.
"Beethoven, of course," was the brief reply.
“Oh!" Maggie felt a little chagrined, and sought
relief by moving to another chair. Her eyes fell on
278
A GIRL GRADUATE.
a portrait of the master, hanging above the piano.
"That is Beethoven, isn't it?" she asked.
"And
wasn't something the matter with him? Wasn't he
blind or something?
Miss Graham took out her handkerchief and rubbed
her nose vigorously, a habit she had when her feelings
were tried.
"It was Milton that was blind," she
said, with manifest irony. "So was Homer. Per-
haps you were thinking of Homer. There wouldn't
have been any particular merit in Beethoven's being
blind, that I know of. He was only deaf."
"Oh, to be sure!" Maggie perceived the irony;
but, although it brought the color to her cheeks, she
was not discouraged. "How very hard that must
have been," she said, in a rather perfunctory tone.
"I wonder he cared to go on composing when he
could hear nothing of what he had written."
Miss Graham wheeled sharply towards her.
"Why
not? Do you suppose he carried his soul in his
ears?"
66 I
“No, of course not," Maggie replied humbly.
know you think me very stupid." The owner of the
portrait turned back to her instrument, making an
unintelligible sound in her throat. She began to play,
going through the composition she had selected, in her
usual creditable style, Maggie listening attentively.
"That is very pretty, especially the soft part," she
said, when the player had finished.
"The soft part!" the other repeated wonderingly.
“Oh, you mean the adagio!"
66
'Why is the sweetest music always the saddest?"
1
GROWING HORIZONS.
279
Maggie asked. She had apparently not heeded the
correction, but stored it in memory and never spoke
of the second part of a sonata as the soft part again.
She was beginning to see that one form of ignorance
may be as bad as another, and the use of correct
phraseology as important in the discussion of music
as of the weather.
66
Why is the saddest music the sweetest?" Miss
Graham said, repeating Maggie's question in reverse
form. "Because it's the truest-because life is sad
-a struggle, a conflict from beginning to end," shut-
ting her lips closely. "That's what Beethoven found
it. Do you suppose he could have written such
music if he had never known trial or sorrow?"
"No, I suppose not," replied Maggie thoughtfully,
though this was a kind of reasoning she held in great
dislike. "Certainly he overcame very great obsta-
cles," she added, somewhat tritely.
66
You mean his deafness? I don't believe he ever
thought of it as an obstacle," Miss Graham replied,
wilfully turning about from her former line of argu-
ment. “Of course, it was a trial; but he had to go
on writing his music, as he had to go on breathing.'
"You mean that he had the idea of the music, and
it was impossible not to express it, whether he could
hear it or not. I think I understand; and I've no
doubt that musical ideas are as good as any other, if
I could only make them out.'
""
"They're a good deal better," was the quick reply;
but Maggie grew a little contrary here, and said she
did not see why.
•
280
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Because they're bigger, -as feeling is always
larger than thought. The ideas music deals with are
generic, not specific. Do you know what I mean by
that?" fixing a piercing glance on her listener.
"You mean
“Ye—es,” Maggie said hesitatingly.
they are more inclusive, not so well defined." As for
feeling being larger than thought, she did not find it
difficult to understand that. She had known some
feelings that covered a good deal of space.
66
Very good. Music expresses general sentiments,
not cut-and-dried ideas. Schumann's Abendlied pre-
sents you with an image of the peaceful close of day,
of calm and restful twilight,
"Where the quiet end of evening smiles,
Miles on miles,'
"""
quoting her favorite, and a much-abused poet, "but it
doesn't tell you what day of the month it is, nor
whether the moon is in her second or third quarter.
You may listen a good while before music will tell
you what road John Smith took when he went court-
ing Susan Brown, the color of her hair or the shape
of his hat; but it is music that brings the whole thing
before you like a picture. You can see it all: the
moonlight on the trees, and the shadow of the long
well-sweep in the yard. You can even smell the
honeysuckles on the porch, and see the silly young
couple hanging over the gate; only it's no longer
John and Susan, you know, but the whole race of
lovers from Hero and Leander down. Music deals
with the universal. It is not its office to particu-
larize."
GROWING HORIZONS.
281
"If I were Susan, I should be glad it wasn't," said
Maggie demurely. It struck her as very amusing
that Miss Graham should have struck just this kind
of illustration. The latter looked at her.
“I suppose the Lord knows why he made women
so narrow-minded," she said resignedly.
"They
never can get beyond the personal view of any-
thing.'
""
Maggie laughed. "Don't you like women, either?"
she inquired. "I thought it was men you dis-
liked."
"So I do; but there are times when I grow recon-
ciled to them. I know of but one young woman who
can look at a subject logically, as a man does, and
keep herself out of it, and yet not want to domineer
over the whole of creation like a man: and that's your
sister Helen."
"Oh, Helen!" Maggie spoke in quiet resignment,
dropping her cheek on her hand.
"She's the most sensible young woman I know.
You ought to be proud of her."
"Do you mean I ought to try to be like her?"
"You couldn't do better. There can never be too
many Helen Deans in the world."
“But, in the mean time, there's one Maggie Dean.
What am I to do with her? She's a very insignifi-
cant person, I know; but I can't help thinking she has
a few rights and privileges."
"She'd better not think too much about her rights
and privileges. Tell her to come and hear me play,
and develop all the gifts she has."
282
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
“I see,” said Maggie, with a lugubrious smile, "you
want me to cultivate Helen's missing talent. Then
you'll piece my one virtue on to hers and so get a per-
fect character. Well," with a sigh, "I don't know
but that would be easier than trying to develop a
perfect character of my own.'
66 If
Don't talk like that," said the older woman.
there's anything I dislike, it's the morbid way young
people talk of themselves nowadays. You'd think
they'd compassed all of Solomon's wisdom and Job's
suffering before they're nineteen. It's your business
to make the most of yourself. Margaret Fuller said,
'The chief business in life is to grow.' You ought
to join the Emerson Class."
"But what is the growing for?" Maggie asked
perversely. "I don't like people who are always
fussing over themselves, whether for their mind's
sake or anything else. I get so tired," she added,
rising and stretching out her arms, "of all this talk
about growth and self-improvement, always getting
ready for something that never happens. As though
we were not as much alive to-day as we shall be to-
morrow. Why shouldn't we live as we go along?
""
"Poor child, if it's living you want, you're likely
to get enough of it," Miss Graham murmured; but
Maggie was moving restlessly about the room, and
did not hear her.
"Why should I join the Emerson Class?" she
asked impatiently. "I hate dividing my time like a
patchwork quilt for the sake of matching the pieces.
I like to have new things happen."
GROWING HORIZONS.
283
"You've got a very ill-regulated mind; I can see
that. I should never think you were Helen Dean's
sister."
"I am tired of being Helen Dean's sister," Maggie
replied, dropping her cheek on her hand. "Not that
I want Helen to die," she added demurely.
"I should think not. Your sister has one of the
most systematic minds I know. I'll warrant she can
get up in the dark and put her hand on anything
she wants; but I don't believe you can."
"No, but I know where the matches are."
She came forward and stood leaning on the piano,
her slim young figure clearly outlined against the
wall.
"I don't want to join the Emerson Class, but I'll
tell you what I would like to do. I should like to
study music."
“Do you mean that you want to take lessons?" the
other asked, in some dismay.
"Oh, dear! no. What is the use of my spending
months and years trying to do something you can do
so much better for me already?" There was a cun-
ning flattery in this, that had its effect. "I mean I
should like to come and hear you play until I have
learned what it is that Beethoven and all the rest
mean. If it is the universal that music teaches, I
It sounds so large and splendid.
There isn't anything in particular you have to re-
member, like names and dates. Will you let me
come?"
think I shall like it.
"Yes, I'll let you," was the dry response; "but,
284
A GIRL GRADUATE.
mind, I don't expect you. You'll be tired of it by
to-morrow."
“Oh, no, I think not," said Maggie gravely, "not be-
fore a fortnight. Are you going to play the John and
Susan piece now?" she asked, as Miss Graham began
turning the leaves of the book. The latter answered
shortly that she was not, explaining, when she had
found what she wanted, that it was a piano arrange-
ment of a composition written in honor of Napoleon,
but afterwards, when the composer learned that the
rising apostle of liberty had accepted the emperor's
crown, given a new title, "L'Eroica." "It's a trib-
ute to the hero in general," Miss Graham went on:
"the heroic type, you know. You generally have to
leave out most of the living examples when you're
after the type. We might call it let me see the
—
triumph of duty," turning a meaning look on her
companion.
-
"Very well," said Maggie tranquilly. "I believe
in duty. All I object to is the theory that it is
necessarily unpleasant. I believe happiness is a duty,
and I think that is what the music will say.
I sus-
pect that is what music is for, to help us see things
as we should like to have them."
“If that is what you are coming to hear me play
for, I forbid it now," said the other, regarding her
frowningly above her spectacles. "I won't be a
party to any such demoralization." Maggie laughed
and looked mutinous.
"Go and sit down somewhere out of sight," the
musician ordered. "I never want any one to look at
GROWING HORIZONS.
285
啐
​•
me when I play," and Maggie went obediently and
seated herself on the other side of the room.
This was the beginning of a growing intimacy
between these two people. Maggie went often to
hear Miss Graham play, and the good effects of this
new acquaintance soon began to manifest themselves.
It was not long before she understood what her
friend meant when she said that musical ideas were
larger than others. As she listened to the flow of
harmonious sounds evoked from the old piano, she
seemed to have gained entrance to a new world, where
truth, freed from the didactic bonds of special formula
and text, is presented in the form of vivid emotion.
Sometimes music transported her into a realm of
pure and ecstatic being, such as freed angels only
can retain permanent possession of; at other times it
saddened her inexpressibly, like the requiem of an
ever-moving creation that "groaneth and travaileth
in pain;" but with sensitive souls the main office of
music is always the same, ennobling the heart and
exalting the imagination.
In her reflections on this new acquaintance, Miss
Graham was obliged to disentangle some troublesome
thoughts.
"Where did those girls get their superior refinement
and intelligence," she asked herself," with a railroad
machinist for a father, and a woman like Amanda
Weatherby for a mother? It wears my brains out
thinking about it. I wish the scientists would stop
laying down their new-fangled laws about heredity
and all that, until they're able to explain the excep-
286
A GIRL GRADUATE.
tions. If I am to believe in a new theory at all, I
like to go ahead and believe in it, and not be contin-
ually apologizing my way through it. It's like knit-
ting a stocking and stopping every moment to pick
up a lost stitch."
Then it occurred to her that a good way to pick up
this stitch might be to cultivate a nearer acquaintance
with the senior members of the Dean family.
She suddenly developed a habit of dropping in
there in an accidental way, first to bring a book for
Helen, or to leave a message, then from no apparent
motive but neighborly interest and good will. She
talked with Mrs. Dean about household matters, and
helped her stripe the new rag carpet she was getting
ready for the weaver; invited herself to supper, and
drew out her host on the convenient subject of the
strikes. The older members of the household came
to regard her with growing favor.
"She's got more sense than I supposed," Mrs. Dean
said, after one of these visits. "Her head's got some-
thing besides books in it. She knows pretty near as
much about dye-stuffs as I do. She wants me to try
her rule for apple butter, and I don't know but I will.
I hate to 'pear unaccommodatin".
When she came to sum up the results of these
visits, Miss Graham, with that peculiar relish for
self-anathematization which natures like hers have,
told herself she had been a fool. "As though it
wasn't native wit and goodness that one generation
inherits from another, rather than any acquired virtue
or accomplishment, like a knowledge of French or
GROWING HORIZONS.
287
china-painting; the tendency to a certain type of
character, rather than the results. That man is one
of the gentlest, bravest souls I know. He's living
in a world that's too big for him, and has been
hungry all his life. You can tell that by the way he
looks at you, like a dog that can't speak. He is a
poet, too." It was natural, now that she had started
on the subject, she should rhapsodize a little over it.
"He doesn't write out his poetry, as Parson Fay does,
and print it, for his women parishioners to cry over
and paste in their scrap-books; but he's got it inside,
just the same. And that's what makes the only real
suffering in this world, having to keep things inside
that want to come outside," relieving her own interior
burden with a sigh. "That man has had his doubts
to wrestle with, as well as the rest of us; only he
hasn't cultivated himself up to the point of making
a merit of it, and would have to get me to explain it
to him. And I guess I could explain it, if anybody
could," shutting her lips together. "I've wrestled
myself - some; and not always with an angel,
either."
"Then, there's the mother," she began again.
"She's by no means so bad. She's efficient and
intelligent, up to her need. Thinks pretty well of
herself, but I suppose she would say the same of me.
But you won't catch her aiming any higher than she
can hit. She doesn't think she ought to rule in the
White House because she can make her husband's
shirts. She sticks to what she knows, and lives in
the concrete world of three meals a day and a clean
t
:
288
A GIRL GRADUATE.
*
table-cloth on Wednesdays. Hegel's doctrine of
'pure being' wouldn't interest her much, but I think
she'd understand what Fichte meant by the Absolute
Ego; and I suppose Wednesday is as good a day to
change the table-cloth as any."
Miss Graham's interest in the Dean family was now
firmly established. Maggie was hardly aware of the
extent to which she had surrendered to this new in-
fluence in her life. She behaved in her usual manner,
and continued to criticise and oppose Miss Graham in
many ways; but new ideas and motives were at work
within her, the results of which were likely to be all
the more genuine that they were only half recognized
by herself. Maggie was but dreamily aware of this
changing sentiment within, shaping to new forms
many of the old thoughts and desires. Life would
never be to her the serious affair it was to Helen.
There was not a trace of mysticism in Maggie, nor
of that generalizing faculty which needs to adjust
correctly the belts of Saturn before sweeping the
front steps. Her metaphysical conception of the
universe was very dim, and she was content to let it
remain so. It was the world of human life and
action which interested her most. The work of
teaching in which she was engaged had proved a
happier means of occupation than she had expected;
and she had the satisfaction of knowing she was
accomplishing a needed service, considerably beyond
anything required by the letter of the contract which
had placed her in her present position.
She had rebelled at the outset against the stiff
GROWING HORIZONS.
289
formalism of the reigning methods, while the rows
of lifeless pupils before her aroused her sympathy
and kindled her ambition. The principle she always
defended, that, other things being equal, the pleasant-
est way of doing a thing is the best, was brought into
play in the schoolroom, and, assisted by some books
Miss Graham recommended, she introduced several
new features into her work, with immediate good
effect on herself and her pupils. She was young and
pretty enough to command their willing admiration
from the first, and when she began to vary the regu-
lar lessons with new marching and gymnastic exer-
cises, and to reward their good behavior with a
chapter from Miss Alcott, they were ready to fall
down and worship her.
Miss Graham watched her young friend's course
with approval which she did not hesitate to give
generous expression to elsewhere, but was careful
to qualify with a few captious remarks when in
Maggie's presence. Finding little to complain of in
the result of Maggie's efforts, she set to work to find
something deficient in her motives.
"It will amount to nothing, your clay-modelling
and the rest, unless you work from the right princi-
ple," she said, one afternoon when the two sisters had
dropped in after school.
“Besides, you are not seri-
ous enough in it. You ought to go to the city and
take a thorough course of instruction in the Froebel
Institute, if you mean to make it your life-work."
"I'm sure I don't know whether it's my life-work or
not," said Maggie, leaning carelessly back in her chair.
290
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
}
T
"There, now! I thought so!
That's the trouble
with young women nowadays. They have no con-
stancy of purpose.
"I should think that applied to Helen more than
to me," Maggie replied, with a teasing look at her
sister, which brought a warm flush to the latter's
cheek. "It is not I who am about to desert the high
and sacred cause of book-keeping."
"Your sister's case is very
different."
"Yes, I know," was the laughing reply. "John
Norton is a favorite, and holds the most improved
views on the subject of plenary inspiration." These
words had a saucy sound, addressed to one so much
older; but they were atoned for by the bright, laugh-
ing glance which accompanied them, Maggie at the
same time reaching out her hand, with a pretty
gesture of deprecation, and laying it softly on her
friend's arm.
"I don't say a young woman shouldn't marry, if
she thinks enough of a man, and he's the right sort;
but
you understand, as well as I do, the motives that
prompt most girls in the selection of a husband, -the
wish to have an establishment of their own, or to
avoid being a disagreeable old maid like me. Such
girls care nothing about their work, and take up with
anything that offers itself, until some man comes
along"
"Now you are unjust, I think," Maggie inter-
rupted; she tried to smile and speak in her usual
manner, but she had shown signs of growing uneasi-
ness during these last remarks, and now rose from
GROWING HORIZONS.
291
"
her seat, and said they must go. Miss Graham did
not notice her embarrassment, but Helen did, and
wondered if she were thinking of Henry Parsons;
but Maggie's disturbance had a cause her sister was
not instructed in
こ
​CHAPTER XVII.
PASSING EVENTS.
MAGGIE'S Work in the schoolroom was watched
with mingled envy and admiration by her associate
teachers, a few of whom began to copy her methods
and enter into friendly co-operation with her. The
principal held himself aloof, with an air of doubtful
wisdom, and kept a sharp lookout for the reports,
at the same time that he fell into the habit of bring-
ing visitors to No. 6, which was rapidly becoming the'
show-room of the building.
Among the school's most frequent visitors was
Judge Foster, chairman of the board of directors,
whose name had long been identified with the edu-
cational interests of the town. It was he who had
sought an introduction to Maggie on the day of her
graduation, and praised her essay. When she applied
for a place as teacher, he showed a pleased remem-
brance of her, and exerted himself to procure her
success. He had been from the first a sympathetic
observer of her efforts to improve the time-honored
methods of her predecessors, lending his official sanc-
tion to many experiments the other directors regarded
with indifference. The presence of the dignified-
looking judge was becoming familiar to the pupils,
292
PASSING EVENTS.
293
and Maggie felt an excusable pride in her influential
ally.
Judge Foster was a widower of several years' stand-
ing, whose domestic life had been further disturbed
by the wild courses of an only son, whom Bertha
Fay had held up in unfavorable contrast with Henry
Parsons, when discussing the question of social eligi-
bility with her father. Maggie had read in his manner
only a paternal feeling for herself, and a desire to assist
in the laudable object of elevating the educational
standards of Litchfield.
Absorbed in her work, and pleasantly convinced of
her own growing usefulness in it, a young woman
may go far towards forgetting she is a young woman;
and when some unlooked-for event or circumstance
suddenly recalls such knowledge, the feeling aroused
is oddly compounded of flattered vanity and dis-
appointment.
The chairman of the board had dropped in late one
afternoon; and after listening with approving attention
to the recitation in geography, and watching the pupils
march in orderly ranks from the room, he remained to
chat a few moments with the teacher. This was not
an unusual thing. Maggie liked talking with this
intelligent and elderly friend, in whose presence she
felt as free as in her father's. She listened to his
praise of her work with a gratified countenance, and
followed up the privilege it bestowed by preferring a
request that had been lying unspoken in her mind a
long time. She explained a new method she wished
to introduce in the geography lessons, but which
1
+
294
A GIRL GRADUATE.
would necessitate the purchase of a set of raised
maps. Maggie had made similar requests of the
board before, through this same medium, and put this
one with the easy and rather assured air of one who
feels confident of a favorable response.
“Well, we must see about it," the judge replied.
He spoke with a pre-occupied air, which Maggie, busy
putting her desk in order, did not observe, and stood
looking at her with a contemplative expression.
"There have been a good many complaints lately
about expenditures," he went on abstractedly. "We
must be a little careful. It's drawing near election,
you know; and we office-seekers have to think about
our records," smiling a little.
"I thought the people elected directors to attend
to the schools," said Maggie, with youthful pertness,
shutting her desk and leaning back in her chair.
66
Ostensibly," the judge replied, looking at her ad-
miringly. "But the schools are a subject of second-
ary interest to the average director. His mind is
more apt to be concerned with the coming primaries."
Then, I am glad there is one who is not an 'aver-
age director,"" was the quick reply. Maggie said this
with the fearless candor of a child. The judge's
gray-whiskered countenance flushed with pleasure.
66
"Thank you, but I'm afraid I've been overdoing
it a little. They're beginning to find fault, and talk
of dropping me. They say I'm extravagant, and
accuse me of-of favoritism." He paused, and
threw a conscious look at her.
"Talk of dropping you!" Maggie exclaimed, un-
PASSING EVENTS.
295
heeding his last words, and dismayed at the thought
of losing her strongest ally. "What a shame! It
ought to be prevented. We will get up a petition.
I will start it myself."
"Oh, things have not gone so far as that, but you
are very kind," with growing impressiveness of tone
and look. "Only, if I were to say anything about
the raised maps just now "—
"Let them go," Maggie generously interrupted,
"I can wait. But I never heard of anything so
mean after all you have done for the schools."
Another glow of pleasure spread over her listener's
face, and he repeated that she was very kind. Lean-
ing forward on the desk, he spoke in a lower and con-
fidential tone. “You shall have the maps," he said,
"I will get them for you myself.
anything you want.”
You shall have
Some subtile change passed over the man with these
words, which affected Maggie unpleasantly; and a
confused feeling of fear and rising distrust crept over
her, but was partly dissipated as her visitor again began
to speak of her work, renewing his praise and promises
of assistance. She could not have told just where
these words of official commendation began to assume
a nearer and more personal meaning. The discovery
of the speaker's changing intent and manner came
slowly, and gave rise, at first, only to a stupefied in-
credulity. It seemed to Maggie as if her senses must
be deceiving her in some way. She sat there in a
cold chill, the smile frozen on her lips, seeming to
encourage what she was listening to. At last, there
296
A GIRL GRADUATE.
was no room for doubt. Her visitor had ceased all
talk about raised maps and the schoolroom, and was
speaking of herself— Maggie Dean. He was asking
her to marry him; and, in anticipation of her reply,
was reaching out his hand to take hers. She sprang
from her seat, as if breaking through some fearful
spell, and cut his words short.
"Oh, hush!" she exclaimed. "Don't say it-you
don't mean it, I am sure.
""
He looked at her in bewilderment.
Evidently,
he had not expected this, and he began a fatuous
protest.
"I beg you will not say another word," said
Maggie severely. "It is not to be thought of — I
wonder at you." In spite of herself, these last words
of astonished reproof would escape. She stepped
quickly to a closet and took out her hat and shawl,
hurriedly putting them on. Her cheeks tingled, and
her heart beat a frightened tattoo, urging her to
escape.
"What do you mean?" her visitor asked, with
a touch of anger, still standing by the desk, to which
Maggie was obliged to return for her keys. "That I
am too old to marry?-fifty-seven is not so old."
Maggie shuddered and shrank away from him.
There seemed reason. Under the double effect
of misdirected passion and offended self-love, the
worthy judge's appearance was anything but re-as-
suring. His stately figure had a limp, half-craven
look, as he stood leaning against the desk, while a
silly, shame-faced expression rested on his counte-
•
PASSING EVENTS.
297
nance. It was as if the whole man had suddenly
dropped to a lower level through the inward relaxa-
tion of some moral fibre, so that he appeared of de-
creased size and stature. Maggie looked at him in
shocked surprise. Was this the friend she had
looked up to for advice and guidance, whose help
she had been so proud of! But most human great-
ness has its moments of imbecility.
"Do you mean to say you prefer the drudgery of
the schoolroom to the life I can give you?" he asked,
with weak boastfulness. "You are different from
most young women, then.”"
"Perhaps I am," Maggie replied, trembling with
excitement. "Other young women must decide for
themselves. I know I would rather die than do such
a thing."
She spoke with the intensity of a conviction
sprung into full being at a bound, and was a little
surprised at her own earnestness. She had never
dreamed of the horrors of a certain kind of mar-
riage until its possibility was thus unexpectedly
thrust on her.
"Your head is full of a girl's romantic notions,"
her persistent suitor replied, "but I can tell you that
a marriage like ours stands a better chance of happi-
ness than half the young folks'."
“Never speak of it again!" Maggie cried, turning
sharply away.
The words "a marriage like ours" seemed already
to have consummated the dreadful event they de-
scribed, and a new alarm and repugnance filled her.
298
A GIRL GRADUATE.
It was as if the man had seized and forcibly drawn
her towards him.
With lifted head and proud, set face, she moved
towards the door, but there her insulted dignity was
forced to pause. She was obliged to let her visitor
pass through first, that she might close and lock the
door. He followed slowly after, with a sulky and
defeated look; but, within a few paces of her, he
stopped and seemed to collect himself. The next
moment, the old natural dignity of mien had returned,
and his face had nearly recovered its usually grave and
sensible expression. He seemed to have called to halt
the retreating forces of his manhood, and stood before
her the courteous, intelligent gentleman she had known
before.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you," he said, with
an old-time wave of the hat he carried in his hand.
"I made a mistake, and beg your pardon." He made
a gesture of farewell, and would have passed her, but
Maggie, taken by surprise in a new direction, stepped
towards him. A generous impulse came over her,
and she was no longer afraid of him.
66
Oh, sir, do not be angry with me. You have al-、
ways been so good to me. I know it is a great honor,
but I-I could never think of it," ending in helpless
climax.
That "sir," dropped falteringly and in a tone of
timid respect, showed the judge, more than anything
else, how hopeless had been the little dream he had
cherished.
66
Pray, forget all about it," he said, in a polite tone,
PASSING EVENTS.
299
deprecating her further interest in the matter. "I will
see what I can do about the maps. Good-afternoon;
and with another old-fashioned wave of the hand he
passed by her and left the building.
Left alone, Maggie went back to her desk and shed
a few excited tears. Now and afterwards, when she
reflected on what had happened, she could not but
wonder a little at herself. Like most girls, she had
more than once speculated on the subject of a mer-
cenary marriage, and in imagination had not found
it difficult to lead the kind of life that had been
offered her, full of luxuries and opportunities she
had always coveted, purchased by quiet acquiescence
on her part. Now she noted with surprise how deep
and strong had been her recoil from it. She could
not account for this feeling. She only knew it was
very real.
Our imagination dupes us in many ways. We are
neither so good and wise, on the one hand, nor so
wicked and foolish, on the other, as dream-fed fancy
often pictures us. Opportunity to commit the ill deed
whose fruits we covet brings an illuminating force
all its own, that shocks us back from actual perform-
ance. Maggie was profiting by the stimulating dis-
covery that she was better than she thought. Yet she
did not tell herself she had done anything very fine
or heroic in rejecting an offer of marriage from the
wealthy and influential judge. On the contrary,
and herein lay the surprise, she had done the only
possible thing to do. There had been no room for a
moment's debate on the subject, and all regret was
300
A GIRL GRADUATE.
lost in a feeling of happy escape. Would that always
be her feeling? she wondered, for naturally Maggie did
not suppose this offer was to be her last. She remem-
bered this had not been her precise state of mind when
Henry Parsons had pressed the same subject on her
attention; but that, she said, without entering into
minute examination of the subject, was very different.
Maggie had lately begun to harbor a slight feeling
of regret when she thought of Henry Parsons, but
she did this in what she believed a perfectly defen-
sible way. It was the lost friend she regretted, not
the lover. That eminently safe conclusion estab-
lished, it became permissible to think about him
sometimes. There seemed plenty of evidence to
herself and others that Maggie was not in a love-
lorn condition. Her step was as light, her smile as
frank and merry, as in the old days when she and
Bertha used to walk to school together. The color
of healthy youth glowed in her countenance. She
seemed at this time wholly and happily occupied in
the present, indulging no useless regrets for the past
nor sentimental longings for the future.
She con-
tinued to hear about Henry Parsons through Helen's
letters, and more ambitious epistolary efforts published
in the Gazette, which referred to its correspondent as
66 our former esteemed citizen."
Report said the son of Tim Parsons, of despised
memory, was doing very well. He had joined his
brains to another man's capital, and the two were
doing a neat little business in real estate. Two or
three of the moneyed men in his native village, among
PASSING EVENTS.
301
them Mr. Danvers, had been induced to venture in
some of the new firm's enterprises, to the benefit of all
concerned, so that the young lawyer was coming to
be something of an authority on certain subjects
among his former townsmen. Sometime, Maggie re-
flected impartially, they would hear the news of his
marriage. He would bring his wife to Litchfield,
and she had often rehearsed her own part in such an
event, her treatment of the new-comer, which was to
be most sisterly and kind. She had abandoned the
fleeting idea of a union between Henry Parsons and
her sister, for the practical reason, before hinted at,
that Helen was engaged to some one else.
Events had slowly ripened since the winter's night
a year ago when she saw the two moonlit figures from
her window. The story of Helen Dean's courtship
had flowed smoothly along from the beginning. So
far as external signs went, John Norton and his be-
trothed might have been taken for a pair of earnest
friends rather than lovers; their interest in each
other having been founded from the first on that intel-
lectual sympathy which friendship knows it cannot
do without, but which love, unhappily, often tries to.
A character like John Norton's is best typified in
the calm sunshine of late summer, which neither
dazzles nor burns, but holds a ripening quality, and
power of radiating life and cheer all its own. With
his even balance of healthful faculties, sound intellect,
and genial manners, springing from an unspoiled
heart, the young minister was regarded by his friends
as nearly a perfect character. Outwardly, he was of
302
A GIRL GRADUATE.
pleasing, though not marked, appearance. A figure
little above medium height, looking somewhat taller,
and with a suggestion of physical delicacy, a frank
blue eye, reddish brown hair and beard, and a win-
ning smile made up his most noticeable characteristics.
He was a man who made friends wherever he went,
yet never made use of them for personal ends. His
own resources were limitless, and to those who had
learned to depend on him he seemed born to the task
of human helpfulness.
He had chosen a profession that remands most of
its followers to the difficult side of things. Born into
the denomination in which he now held the place of
ordained minister, religious growth had been with
him almost as simple and natural a process as that of
the body. He had but opened his being on all sides
to receive whatever light of truth or spiritual blessing
the universe contains. A sincere, natural piety per-
vaded all his teachings, unmarred by weak sentiment,
and supported by a mental poise that kept him quietly
faithful to his chosen ideals of belief and conduct day
by day.
"I've only one fault to find with John Norton,"
Miss Graham said to Maggie, during the latter's early
acquaintance with him, "and that is, that he is so
little of an enthusiast."
"You mean so little of a fanatic?" Maggie asked
correctingly. As this was about what the older
woman did mean, though she did not wish to say so,
she scowled.
"You may call it 'fanatic' if you want to. That
PASSING EVENTS.
303
is the usual reward people get in this world who are
in downright earnest. But there's another one
coming. Do you remember that line of Mrs.
Browning's? -
"Earth's fanatics oftentimes make heaven's saints.'"
"Dear me! what an easy road to sainthood!" said
Maggie, with girlish satire. "I am glad Mr. Norton
has chosen another. I suppose you are disappointed
because he will not settle down in Litchfield and take
charge of a liberal society here."
Miss Graham made an inarticulate murmur of
mixed assent and deprecation. "Of course, I know
there are difficulties in the way," she said.
"I should think there were," Maggie replied.
"The chief difficulty is that the liberal society
doesn't exist."
"It never will," the other retorted sharply, "if no
one has the courage to make a beginning. A man
must have enough missionary zeal to save fifty Indias
in order to make an impression on a town like this,"
she added inconsistently.
"Litchfield isn't one of the fields white for harvest,"
Maggie lazily commented. "I suppose Greenville is."
This was the name of the place Norton had received
an invitation to settle in. "For my part, I like Mr.
Norton all the better because he is so little of a par-
tisan. He is a firm believer in Unitarianism, but he
doesn't seem in the least anxious to make me one.'
""
"I suppose you think you are ar Episcopalian,”
said her hostess dryly.
304
A GIRL GRADUATE.
•
Maggie made no direct reply to this, reflecting a
little. Then she said, with mock impressiveness, “I
am like Emerson, I'm a seeker.'"
"If that's the case, you'd better look up the history
of Henry the Eighth."
"Don't you think that is a rather old story about
Henry the Eighth?"
"Not so old as the story of the fall of man.'
""
"But you don't believe that, you know." Maggie
laughed. "Even Mr. Norton says the Episcopal
Church is very broad-in England, it represents the
finest culture and scholarship."
"In England, perhaps. In Litchfield it stands for
Mr. Fay and all kinds of social snobbery. Now, I
happen to know that John Norton has the same
opinion of the Apostles' Creed that I have, only he
doesn't say so."
"That is not because he is afraid to," Maggie
hastily answered, already in sufficient liking for her
new friend to defend him. "It is because his way of
looking at things is different from some liberals'.
What he likes best is to find the points of likeness
between two opposing views, and not the points of
difference. I'm sure that is much more amiable.”
*
Oh, amiable!" the other exclaimed impatiently.
"It would be more amiable in me, I suppose, to spend
my time trying to decide, with my neighbor Brown,
on the invisible' line that shall keep his cow from
coming over into my yard and trampling down my
currant bushes; but I prefer to build a board fence.
That settles the question, and saves my currants.
PASSING EVENTS.
305
Polly, I wish you wouldn't interrupt," she ended, to
the green-and-yellow torment in its cage near by,
who, inspired by the long and rather excited dis-
course of her mistress, entered into the conversation.
with a shrill cackle. Maggie went towards the bird
and addressed it some words of pretended comfort.
"Poor Polly! Why don't you get Miss Graham to
make you a cap, Polly?" in allusion to the bald head-
piece of that ancient fowl, and spoken in a teasing
accent that the bird understood, if not the words,
ruffling its feathers and pecking at the speaker
through the bars of the cage.
"Fie, Polly! I'm sorry you have such a bad temper.
And analogy isn't always good argument, Polly."
"Polly and I are often called bad-tempered," said
her owner, "because we don't know how to show
our injured feelings gracefully. If we did, people
would only praise us for our sensitive temperament.
Analogy is as good an argument as any other when
people want to be convinced. I'm not saying any-
thing against John Norton. Breadth of view is a
desirable virtue, I suppose, though I've never hank-
ered after it as much as some people. I prefer dis-
tinctness of vision any time. I like to see the thing
that lies right before my eyes, and I've noticed that
the people who are after the big horizons generally
miss that little virtue."
Helen's family could form but faint conjecture on
her relation to this new acquaintance when he was
first presented to them; but that it was one of rapidly
progressing understanding may be inferred from the
306
A GIRL GRADUATE.
fact that, on his third visit, he asked for a son's
place among them. The frank, upright nature of
the man never appeared to better advantage than at
this time. John Norton had the perfect manners
that spring from unselfishness and a genuine interest
in those about him. He had to overcome no feeling
of strangeness or embarrassment with Helen's parents,
for the simple reason that he felt none; and this is but
to add that very soon they came to feel none either.
Thomas Dean may have inclined at first to look upon
his proffered son-in-law with distant respect, bordering
on dread, but this feeling soon melted into gratified
liking and trust. Mrs. Dean regarded him with a
little preliminary suspicion, intent, here as elsewhere,
on preserving her independence; but she soon grew
ashamed of this feeling, and came to hold her
daughter's plighted husband in open admiration.
Maggie was not at home when the news of her sister's
engagement was broken. She had been spending the
evening with a friend, and it was late when she entered
the house to find Mr. Norton there. He was standing
with Helen, near the table, on the opposite side of
which her father and mother sat. An expectant air
hung over the little group, that arrested Maggie's
attention, and she involuntarily paused inside the door.
A look of flushed happiness and pride overspread her
father's face, and her mother also seemed agitated,
though she tried to hide it in the brisk play of her
knitting-needles. Helen looked gravely happy. Her
lover had evidently just stopped speaking. Maggie
darted a rapid glance round the little circle, wonder-
PASSING EVENTS.
307
ing if she was expected to withdraw, when her father
spoke to her.
"Come here, my little girl." She went up to him,
and he placed his arm about her, seeming to derive
some needed support in this way. It was difficult to
address the two before him, so he turned to her.
"Mr.
Norton has asked Helen to be his wife. What shall
we say to him?"
Maggie hesitated a moment, and her eyes looked
searchingly into those of the young man.
"Helen ought to answer first, I think. She is older
than I." A smile went round the circle and relieved
the tension. Helen slipped round to her father's
side, who released Maggie to rise and give her a
kiss of paternal blessing. She had to bend down to
take her mother's, who would not acknowledge the
tear glittering on her cheek, by brushing it away,
and vigorously resumed her knitting the next moment.
"Kiss your sister, Maggie," her father said, but
before this John Norton had stepped forward and
taken her hand.
“I have always wanted a sister," he said, smiling
down at her. Maggie looked thoughtfully up at him.
"Helen will tell you I don't make a very good one,"
she replied.
"No-
"No, she won't," was the confident answer.
body shall say that of a sister of mine,-not even
Helen."
Maggie liked this, and flashed a bright smile at
him, then lifted her face to receive the salute her
new relationship had earned.
308
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"O Helen! I am sure you will be very happy,
because you deserve to," she cried, throwing her
arms about her sister.
They all laughed at this. "Looks as if Maggie'd
found out why she ain't over-happy herself,” her
mother said. "Well, I never thought I should want
one o' my girls to marry a minister," she added, a mo-
ment after. “Give me a man that's learned a trade,
and knows how to earn a day's livin', I've always
said; but I'm free to own it looks diff'rent now.
I guess it ain't so much the minister as it is the man."
The minister appeared to enjoy this. "Certainly
the man ought to count first," he said.
"Yes, that's true," said Thomas Dean, bringing his
hand slowly down on the arm of his chair.
"The man
had ought to count first." He spoke with deep-toned
emphasis and careful deliberation, as if he had origi-
nated the remark himself, and seemed to ponder it
deeply afterward. Thoughts were so much easier to
Thomas Dean than words.
Maggie had liked John Norton from the first, and
the relation now established between them promised
to become the source of much happiness and profit.
Maggie was one with whom the personal relations
of life predominate above all other influences. An
agreeable companion, some one she liked and could
talk to freely, was more to her than a world of
books. Apparently she was always surrounded with
admirers, yet, since her separation from Bertha Fay,
she had had no intimate companion or confidant,
unless Miss Graham could be counted such. Maggie
PASSING EVENTS.
309
contrasted John Norton with Mr. Fay, and said the
former was the most perfect gentleman she knew,
then, sensible of the inadequacy of this praise, she
added that he was the best man. He was good with-
out being tiresome, a rare accomplishment in Maggie's
eyes. He was always entertaining, could be wise when
he chose, and was never silly, as wise people often are
when they try to make themselves agreeable. More-
over, this new acquaintance had made a snug, warm
place for her in his brotherly heart, all her own, inde-
pendent of any other relation. She talked more freely
with this friendly confessor than with any one else,
seeking his counsel, and revealing the strange medley
of contradictory impulses, hopes, and longings which
fill a young girl's heart. John Norton seemed to
understand her, she said, with that pensive injury
we all cherish at times against a cold and uncompre-
hending world. That did not mean he always agreed
with her, only that he took her on trust and for
what she was. Her nature played as freely in his
as a happy child in the blossoming fields. Profiting
by his wider experience and trained judgment, she
was left free to follow her own best interior prompt-
ing. In a word, Maggie was her natural self in this
new friend's company, a condition that meets the
needs of the growing spirit more nearly than we
know.
"Do you think I ought to join the Emerson Class?"
she asked him, one day, when he had overtaken her on
her way from school, and was walking home with her.
"There wouldn't be any 'ought' in my case," he
310
A GIRL GRADUATE.
replied. "I should welcome every chance of contact
with that great, enlightened soul."
"Oh, but they stopped studying Emerson ages ago.
Of course, I like Emerson too," defensively, and de-
termined not to fall short of her newly acquired stand-
ards. "Only I don't pretend to understand the
metaphysical essays. I like the essay on Manners'
better than that on The Over-soul.""
6
6
"That's natural-at your age," smiling down at
her. He liked, with his thirty years, to assume an
older brother's superiority now and then, "and likely
to be of more benefit," he added teasingly.
"I've
Maggie laughed, and said she supposed so.
never thought it made any difference whether I joined
or not," she began again, "but now"
"But now your conscience is pricking you a little."
"It isn't my conscience," Maggie replied irritably.
"It's Miss Graham's. Somebody ought to get up a
new invention by which people can be made to con-
sume their own consciences."
Her listener was amused at this, but did not agree.
"That kind of consumption is too easy already," he
said. "What is the matter with Miss Graham?'
""
"She is in perfect despair because Helen is going
away. She hasn't asked me to take her place, but I
know what she is thinking about. It's the way she
refrains from asking me that provokes me. She
thinks me so insignificant."
“Oh, I think not," her companion replied sooth
ingly.
"Yes, she does,” Maggie retorted, with a little heat.
PASSING EVENTS.
311
"She says I have no great purpose in life. What if
I haven't?" lifting her eyes with a defiant flash to
his.
John Norton still looked a little amused; then this
expression changed, and he pulled thoughtfully at
his beard.
"You probably make a different use of the word
'great.' Any purpose in life is great enough that is
a just and necessary one, and gives our natures full
scope. One need not be a moral Alexander, weeping
for more worlds to conquer.'
""
“That is what I think," said Maggie approvingly.
"I am content with very small triumphs in the duty
line, myself."
66
Her listener did not seem so amused at this.
Triumphs of any kind that are too easily won
rank little better than failures," he said.
"You
would not willingly let pass a new opportunity of
usefulness."
Maggie flushed a little. "How can I be sure the
Emerson Club is a new opportunity of usefulness?
And I could never make as good a secretary as
Helen. She is always blaming me because I am not
like Helen."
"Why not show her you can be Helen's equal as
Maggie?" A strange suggestion from a lover, per-
haps, but John Norton was not a man who found it
necessary to sum up the whole of human perfection
in a single specimen, even in his chosen wife. He
would as soon have thought of denying the merits of
another style of beauty than hers. Maggie shrugged
312
A GIRL GRADUATE.
her shoulders, as at a suggestion impossible to carry
out.
“I have heard you say, yourself," she said, tacking
her sails to another quarter, "that we make use of
many artificial methods in the pursuit of modern
culture."
"Very likely," he replied. "All methods become
wearisome in time. I know people who think church-
going a tiresome process, and I can testify there are
times when the minister feels the infliction as much
as anybody. But the culture itself need not be arti-
ficial. The question of Cui bono? is an unsafe one to
raise anywhere, and, carried to its logical conclusion,
might lead us to doubt the wisdom of lacing our
shoes. Things are necessarily mechanical in a world
governed by the conditions of time and space, and
where we have bodies. We must wait until we are
translated into a condition of pure spirit before we
can make spontaneity our law of action."
"I wonder if we ever shall be," said Maggie, lifting
her eyes to the gray November sky above, and letting
her thoughts follow the lead of these last words.
"Do you think we have any proof of immortality?"
turning suddenly towards him.
"We have the proof that lies alongside the knowl-
edge we are now alive," was the answer. "That
fact is as wonderful and difficult to explain as the
problem of a future existence can be.”
"Does that kind of reasoning satisfy you?" Maggie
asked doubtingly.
"Not always," was the frank reply, "nor com
PASSING EVENTS.
313
pletely ever. But I suspect there are some things
it was not meant we should have satisfactory knowl-
edge about."
"Miss Graham thinks she has satisfactory knowl-
edge. She believes she has had communications."
"Fancies she believes it.
She likes to practise a
Not that there is any-
little self-delusion that way.
thing essentially bad in the belief. Noble souls have
held it in all ages."
"I never could believe it," said Maggie, with
youthful fervency of dislike for an unrespected
topic. "Nothing would induce me. Miss Graham
says that is because I have never suffered. She lays
it up against me that nothing very bad has ever hap-
pened to me. She says suffering is the purifying
flame everybody must pass through. But I told her
Helen had never suffered."
"What did she say to that?" These constant,
aggrieved allusions to "Helen" amused John Norton
a good deal.
"Flatly contradicted herself said there were some
people who didn't need purifying flame. I have prom-
ised to let her strike the match when I get ready to
mount my funeral pyre."
They had reached the gate, which he opened for
her, passing in after her.
"Then, you think I ought to take Helen's place?"
she asked, as they walked slowly up the path.
"I think Miss Graham deserves all the help she can
get."
"Yes, I suppose so," with a little sigh.
314
A GIRL GRADUATE.
..
“And in a town like Litchfield, where the tendency
to a frivolous and rather vulgar social life overrides
every other, it seems to me that every one who sees
that, and has a chance to offset it with something
better, ought to welcome the opportunity."
"Oh, if you are going to put it on the ground of
my moral influence
66
Why shouldn't I put it there? I don't want to
preach to you, little sister, but chiefly because I
think you do not need it. You will know what to
do."
"Oh, I can see that I shall go into the class and
become its most exemplary member," said Maggie,
with affected resignation.
They had paused a moment on the little porch to
finish their talk.
"What are you two talking about so seriously?"
asked Helen, as she opened the door from the inside,
and stood smiling at them.
"We were talking about Suttee worship in India,"
Maggie replied, after they had entered the house,
casting a laughing glance at their visitor.
"And whether its abolition is likely to lessen Miss
Graham's chances of marrying a missionary and going
out there to start a suffrage society," the latter added,
meeting Maggie's look with one like it. Helen was
mystified, but unconcerned, pronouncing them a pair
of giddy young people. She reseated herself at her
sewing, her lover taking his place at her side with an
air of proprietorship.
Mrs. Dean had risen from her seat in some trepida
PASSING EVENTS.
315
tion at the unexpected entrance of this guest. Young
people had a queer way of talking nowadays, she
thought. She could not remember any conversations
like this and others she had caught disjointed scraps
of at any of the husking and paring bees of her youth.
She had intended to have a plain supper, made up of
the remnant of a loaf of bread left over from Satur-
day's baking; but now she folded her sewing, and
went into the kitchen to make some of her match-
less biscuits.
CHAPTER XVIII.
JOYS AND TRIALS.
MISS GRAHAM was highly pleased with the out
come of an acquaintance she herself had brought
about, yet felt she had some cause of resentment.
Her romantic old heart had been fixed on this en-
gagement ever since she first saw John Norton and
Helen Dean together; and many a wily scheme had
she perfected to assist their knowledge of each other,
and hasten an event which now seemed to have tran-
spired of its own accord.
So natural and unconscious had been the behavior
of these young people that Miss Graham had felt
herself foiled in every attempt at match-making, and
stood ready to pronounce them the most prosaic and
insensible young couple she knew, when one day
Helen quietly announced their engagement.
She
pushed up her spectacles and stared at her.
"Well, I give up!" she exclaimed.
were ever two people in the world on whom I
thought I could depend a little, it was you and
John Norton." Helen looked surprised incompre-
hension at this remark.
"If there
"Engaged!" her friend repeated, with a sceptical
accent. "Why, you've hardly looked at each other!"
316
JOYS AND TRIALS.
317
Helen smiled, and began to be enlightened. "We've
felt each other," she replied softly.
"Humph! Well, it's the last time I'll ever try my
hand at anything of that kind."
66
I
A
"Dear Miss Graham, you shall have all the credit,
if there is any," Helen said, taking her hand.
should never have known him but for you."
deeper light glowed in her eyes as she made this in-
direct admission of her happiness.
"I only hope you'll never lay it up against me,'
the older woman answered, with affected crossness.
"Of course, you think there never was such a man.
"It was you I first heard praise him.'
""
"That may be, but you can never tell what mar-
riage will do for a man. It makes selfish tyrants of
most of them. Don't spoil him, that's all I've got to
say. Don't make an Oriental slave of yourself. Let
him fetch his own slippers."
"Spoil him-spoil John Norton?" Helen re-
peated, with an incredulous accent.
There, now! you're as bad as the rest. What I
mean is that a man doesn't marry a woman to make
a drudge and loving little simpleton of her, though
he lets her settle down into that if she wants to. A
man marries for companionship at least a man like
John Norton. When I think of the relation women
might hold to their husbands, and compare it with
that they are content to hold, a petted doll or an
upper servant without wages, I despair of the whole
race. Now, John Norton wasn't attracted to you
because you have dark hair and a straight nose."
318
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
·
Helen, who had never before reflected on these points
of advantage, smiled faintly, and said she hoped not.
"It was because you have a mind some power of
intelligent sympathy with his ideas. He likes to talk
to you, and believes you can understand and help him
better than any one else. It's your business to see
that he keeps on thinking so.
When he asks you to
help him decide between two subjects for a sermon,
don't put him off by telling him you've got to make
a sponge cake for supper."
Helen expressed her thanks, and promised to do
what she could to realize this difficult friend's expec-
tations. Miss Graham then dropped this tone, rose
from her chair, and placed her hands on Helen's
shoulders.
"My dear girl, I am glad as I can be. I know you
don't mind my little ways. You may kiss me if you
like;" and Helen dropped a congratulatory kiss for
herself on the faded cheek bent to receive it.
Miss Graham had a little extra sharpness for the
young man when she spoke with him.
"Mind you treat her as well as she deserves," she
said, frowning at him a little, in anticipative punish-
ment of the marital misdeeds he was likely to fall
into. "If you don't, I'll never forgive you for
making me take an interest in you. If you care for
the best that's in her now if it's her mind and
character you admire, keep on admiring them.
That's the secret of most of the unhappy marriages
I know; husbands take no pains to bring out the
higher qualities of their wives. All they want is a
:
JOYS AND TRIALS.
319
housekeeper," and John Norton, duly humbled and
admonished, also promised to do what he could.
Then, with the baseness of their tribe, the lovers
told each other all that happened, and gave them-
selves up to much private amusement over the super-
fluous advice that had been given them.
"She hopes we'll care as much for each other ten
years from now," Helen said smilingly.
"Poor old lady! she's had a rather melancholy
time of it, picking up the requisite number of un-
pleasant facts to support her theories. We must
invite her to visit us, if only that her presence may
operate as a check to the inevitable tendency to
matrimonial indifference." They laughed again;
then Helen grew repentant, and said they ought to
be ashamed of themselves, and that she was one of
the best of women anyway.
The marriage took place shortly after the holidays,
for the minister wanted to take a wife with him to
the new parish he had accepted. Mrs. Dean was loud
in her complaints over this hasty arrangement. It was
quite outside her conception of things that a daughter
of hers should be married without giving her time to
fit her out with the needful supply of sheets and
table-cloths, hand-made, and in orderly piles of a
dozen each.
Maggie's first feeling was one of youthful interest
and excitement over the preparations for the approach-
ing nuptials; but, as the wedding day drew near, a
new sense of sisterly loss and loneliness crept over
her. She looked about the little chamber, with its
320
A GIRL GRADUATE.
sloping ceiling and dormer window, where she and
Helen had slept together so many years, and won-
dered how it would seem when she was left there
alone. There would be no one to disapprove of or
criticise her after Helen was gone; but she derived
less satisfaction from that reflection than she had
sometimes thought she should. She sat watching
her sister the day before the wedding, while the
latter packed her simple possessions in a new trunk,
marked with initials not her own. Sober thoughts
filled the mind of each, which they did not try to
give expression to, their remarks touching only on
the surface of things.
“You ought not to put that silk in first," said
Maggie, as Helen began folding a new silk, golden-
brown in color. "It will get crushed;" and the
latter, who always acted on Maggie's judgment in
some things, laid it to one side.
"Shall you wear gloves?" she asked, a moment
after. Helen reflected, and said she thought not.
"It doesn't make so much difference with a travel-
ling-dress," Maggie replied consentingly; "and it
saves bother with the ring. Suppose Mr. Adams
cannot come? Will you get Mr. Fay to perform the
ceremony?" Mr. Adams was a friend of John
Norton, and brother clergyman of the same denomi-
nation, who was expected to arrive with him that
evening. Helen replied, with quiet decisiveness, that
Mr. Fay's services would not be required in any case.
"I do not wish to be married with the church cere
mony,” she said, in partial explanation.
JOYS AND TRIALS.
321
"Is it because you object to the word 'obey'?"
Helen said "Yes," and fortified herself by adding
that her lover felt as she did.
"I don't suppose it means anything," said Maggie
carelessly.
“Then, that is a good reason for not saying it.”
The older sister crossed the room to the bureau, to
take a few articles from one of the drawers. Placing
them on a chair, she took up the package of letters
that had so often irritated Maggie's vision, and held
them in her hand a moment.
"I don't know what to do with these," she said, in
a doubting tone. Maggie took up a piece of ruching
from a box near by, and began to inspect it critically,
keeping covert watch of her sister, however.
"I think I will leave them," Helen said at last,
dropping the package back into the drawer.
66
Then, put them away somewhere, please," Maggie
made quick, half-pettish request. "I shall want all
the room there is."
There are compensations for most losses, and one
not to be despised, in Maggie's opinion, for the en-
forced separation from her sister, even had she no
other motive for getting rid of the letters, was the
knowledge that she should have a dressing-bureau to
herself.
"You may take care of them for me," Helen re-
plied, in a peculiar tone. "I haven't time now.
That reminds me," she added, "that I received
another to-day. I haven't read it yet." She drew a
letter from her pocket and tore off the end of the en-
322
A GIRL GRADUATE.
velope. Spreading open the large letter-sheet, she
began to read. A rather impatient expression gath-
ered on her face as she hastily scanned the written
lines. "I can't stop to read this now," she said.
"I'll leave it here with the rest," and carelessly
dropped the unfolded sheet in the drawer. Maggie
was still intent on the strip of ruching, but she could
not resist a remark. It looked worse to keep still
than to talk on some topics, she thought.
"That isn't very complimentary to the writer,"
she said dryly. "I imagine Mr. Parsons's letters
must be very useful reading. It seems a pity not to
profit by them. I suppose he writes about the wheat
crop and Chinese immigration, doesn't he?"
"Not altogether," was the reply, the speaker smil-
ing a little. "But I will leave the letters here—you
can read them if you like."
"Thank you,” said Maggie, in her most non-com-
mittal tone, "but I think I will finish my course in
German literature first. I don't want to overdo.
You had better let me sew in this ruching for you,
she ended, abruptly changing the topic from one she
was rather ashamed of falling on to.
"Yes, I wish you would," said Helen, and Maggie
knew why. She admired her sister, and looked up to
her, was very proud that a man like John Norton
wanted to marry her; but there were a few things
that she, Maggie, could do better than Helen.
The latter went out of the room, and Maggie rose
to get needle and thread from the bureau. Through
ill luck or a nervous trembling of the hand, the needle
вы
JOYS AND TRIALS.
323
fell into the open drawer, lodging itself securely in a
crack near the pile of letters, requiring some pains to
extricate it. During this operation it was impossible
for Maggie to avoid sight of certain lines on the open
sheet just under her eyes; and, after all, why should
she try so hard not to read them, since she had full
permission? The first sentence her eye caught ran
like this, "You have entered the snug enclosure of
your own happiness, and have no thought for disap-
pointed wretches outside." No hint in this as to
whether or not the Chinese must go; and, in a sud-
den desire for further information on this or some
other topic, Maggie took up the letter and deliber-
ately read it through. "What do you mean by
saying you will tell me nothing more about her,"
the writer went on; "that it will be more for my
benefit to stop thinking of this subject?
Let my
benefit take care of itself. You who have learned
what this sort of feeling is, and are about to reap its
gains, pay light regard to it in another. Why don't
you tell me to refuse food when I am hungry, to give
up the natural exercise of my limbs, to stop looking
up at the stars, and getting the thought a just God
reigns somewhere? You might as well."
The paper
trembled in Maggie's hands, and an excited color
burned in her cheek. She did not now try to stay
the sudden, strong desire to read the rest of the
letters; and for an hour she sat there, drawing one
after another from its envelope, not stopping to re-
place them, but letting them fall to the floor, where
they lay in a loose mass. They were not all of the
324
A GIRL GRADUATE.
same temper, but all bore more or less on a single
theme. Some were darkly despondent in tone, others
sadly resigned, while a few were imbued with a more
heroic spirit, even striving to be cheerful.
Maggie found herself rarely spoken of by name,
though there was no letter but contained some allu-
sion, more or less direct, to the writer's loss; and the
plain motive underlying the writing of each was the
hungry need of news of her.
"Don't think of me as a whining, melancholy
fellow who goes about with a long face, and an in-
ward sense he's too good for the world he was born
in," he wrote in one. "If you were to ask any of
my new friends out here about me, I fancy they
would not draw my portrait all in grays and blacks.
They would tell you I was one of the lucky ones.
The people here are kind to me and trust me. I
seem to have made a useful place for myself among
them. That, in itself, is a source of a good deal of
superficial contentment. I have learned that a man
may be monstrously unhappy in the main, 'yet get a
good deal of incidental satisfaction out of things; as
if he had put all his fortune into some rare gem he
had lost, yet could not help seeing the beauty of the
flowers by the wayside, and how good it is to have
the sun shine.”
In another letter this philosophic spirit had disap-
peared, and was replaced by one of renewed pain and
protest. "Whatever you do, don't praise her to me,
he wrote. "It angers me when you say anything
against her, but it fills me with despair when you tell
*
JOYS AND TRIALS.
325
Besides,
me how good and gentle she is growing.
there's an insufferable arrogance in it I hate, as
though there were more need of improvement there
than elsewhere. Who are we to blame or praise
her?"
Then followed a lame apology for the writer's rude-
ness, and the letter abruptly ended.
Hearing a footstep on the stairs, Maggie hastily
picked up the letters and thrust them into the
drawer. Her cheeks wore a deeper flush than be-
fore, and she was in a strange tumult of surprised
and triumphant feeling, touched with repentant pity.
This was what Henry Parsons's letters to Helen had
meant. They had but served as a safety-valve to an
overcharged heart, whose crowded emotions of love
and suffering could not be left continually to revolve
about themselves. The gift of affection conveys a
high compliment under any circumstances, and the
knowledge of a strong, impassioned love, standing
faithfully by us in spite of the indifference, even
injury, with which we have rewarded it, moves us
deeply. It was impossible after this that Maggie's
thoughts of her old lover should not be of a gentler
order. The knowledge, gained from other sources,
that he had entered on a career of growing prosperity
and usefulness, in the new community where he lived,
gratified her. It did not, however, surprise her.
She had always thought well of Henry Parsons, and
understood his capabilities. She should like to know
who had had a better chance, or right even, to under-
stand him than she, the confidant of his boyish dreams,
326
A GIRL GRADUATE.
his nearest friend and companion. It looked as if the
old feeling of ownership was coming back.
Maggie wished she could piece out the knowledge
thus gained of this correspondence with a clearer un-
derstanding of her sister's part and purpose. What
had Helen said about her? Plainly, she had praised
her a little. Had she been growing good? Maggie
asked herself, with a little mocking smile. She did
not know it, and could not credit herself with having
tried to. But the kingdom of heaven comes not with
observation. It was much to have gained an approv-
ing opinion of any kind from Helen.
Perhaps the preparations for Helen's wedding helped
to soften Maggie's general ideas on the subjects of love
and marriage. Anyway, she carried about with her at
this time a feeling of light-hearted happiness. Life
seemed both easy and pleasant, and to contain a hint of
coming good fulfilment she did not try clearly to de-
fine to herself. After Helen's marriage, she entered
on her duties, as the only daughter of the household,
with a new sense of dignity and responsibility. She
had the dressing-bureau to herself, and the independ-
ence of her position did much to assuage its loneli-
ness. She kept on with her work in the schoolroom,
and just now was unusually busy, preparing for the
spring examinations.
It was a raw, windy day in March when Maggie re-
turned from school, face and eyes aglow from contact
with the keen air outside, and in good spirits, to have
the latter quickly dampened by a sight she had never
seen before: her mother sitting ill and helpless before
JOYS AND TRIALS.
327
the stove, trying in vain to warm herself, and drawing
a short, sharp gasp of pain with every breath. It was
washing-day, and Mrs. Dean, with the reckless se-
curity of people who boast themselves in perfect
health, had left the steam-filled kitchen to face the
cutting winds outside and hang out the clothes, and
was now suffering from the incipient stages of pneu-
monia. That was what the doctor, whom Maggie
had hastily sent for, pronounced it, after a grave-faced
examination of his patient. Father and daughter,
listening to this verdict, looked at each other in dumb
stupor. It was the first case of real sickness in the
house since Maggie had the measles; and the fact that
it had struck at the most active and capable one among
them, the mother and faithful care-taker, filled them
with dismay.
As they cast about to sum up their resources
against this sudden calamity, it became evident that
Maggie must give up her school. A small town like
Litchfield affords almost no chance for trained help
in the sick-room, and it would not do to depend on
the voluntary assistance of friends and neighbors.
Though the doctor counselled it, neither Maggie nor
her father wished to send for Helen, chiefly because
of the fear such an action would imply that the
illness was of a dangerous character.
It cost Maggie a sharp struggle to give up her
work; but she made no complaint, taking up her new
duties as nurse and housekeeper with as much cheer-
ful resolution as she could summon.
A strange
silence and sense of desolation filled the little house.
328
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Maggie felt she would rather be scolded all day than
so constantly miss the sound of those lively accents,
which, now sunk to a feeble whisper, seemed to have
been the only thing that kept the house alive. Thomas
Dean went about with a dazed and frightened look,
and a man's sense of helplessness, depending wholly
on Maggie, and holding himself in humble readiness
to execute any of her wishes.
Miss Graham proved a useful friend and adviser at
this period; and, though she fretted a good deal
about Maggie, and found fault with her, she watched
her course with much secret admiration, and wrote
Helen letters brimful of praise.
Three weeks passed before Mrs. Dean was able to
leave her bed. Maggie was looking pale and over-
worn; but Helen was home now, and had assumed
temporary direction of affairs. The air was a little
warmer, and a purplish tint was spreading over the
dead tree-branches, when the sick woman exchanged
her bed for the big rocker; and, wrapped in quilts
and supported by pillows, was drawn into the sitting-
room, to await her husband's return to supper. He
had gone out a few miles on the road that morning,
to overlook a piece of repairing.
"You won't find me here when you come back,”
his wife had said, as he came in to take a parting look
at her where she lay on the bed; but he had repeated
the doctor's caution, and advised her not to hurry.
Mrs. Dean, however, had obeyed the doctor's wishes
as long as she meant to. Her old spirit was begin
ning to assert itself.
1
JOYS AND TRIALS.
329
"I think mother is going to get well," Maggie
said to her sister a few days before. "She scolded
me this morning for bringing her broth in the wrong
bowl."
Her daughters had helped her to rise, and adjusted
her as comfortably as they could in the large chair;
but the exertion proved greater than she anticipated,
and she leaned back against the pillows, with white
face and closed eyes.
"It has been too much for you," Maggie said,
looking anxiously down at her.
"I shall sit up till your father comes," her mother
replied, opening her eyes, and then closing them
again. Neither daughter thought it wise to oppose
her, while Maggie, thinking it best to encourage a
resolve she could not hinder, began talking in a
lively strain.
“I know he will be dreadfully disappointed if you
don't," she said. "Poor father! he's been perfectly
lost. I used to think Helen and I were of some ac-
count, but I've learned better."
A weak, flattered smile stole across the sick woman's
face, and, feeling a little rested, she let her eyes wan-
der slowly about the room. The sewing-machine had
been moved to another corner, and she made a weak-
voiced remonstrance against this and one or two other
changes she detected.
“I suppose I shall find things at sixes and sevens,'
she said.
""
"Oh, they're way up to the twenties," Maggie
gayly replied. She was setting the table, and, com-
330
A GIRL GRADUATE.
...
ing back to her mother's side, she bent another
examining look on her. Then, under pretence of
drawing the quilt closer about her, she gave her an
affectionate hug.
"I'm so glad to see you up again, that I don't care
how much you find fault with me," she said, upon
which her mother shrewdly surmised there was need.
"Plenty of need," said Maggie. "I have left un-
done those things I ought to have done, and have
done those things I ought not to have done,” she
went on, with mock solemnity. "I've broken the
glass sugar-bowl, and the parlor hasn't been swept
for a month."
"The glass sugar-bowl!" her mother faintly ex-
claimed. This was the last of a respected set of
three pieces, done in thick crystal ornamented with
blue acorn handles, a part of Mrs. Dean's wedding
outfit, whose old-fashioned ugliness Maggie hated.
When the bowl slipped from her hands and fell
crashing to the floor, she had been a little frightened
at first, remembering her mother's feeling, then a
wicked joy seized her as she picked up the pieces
and threw them far out into the yard. She returned
to her work of getting supper, stepping into the
kitchen. A moment later, the outer door was flung
open, and a boy with white, scared face stood on the
threshold.
"Oh, Miss Dean!" he gasped, "your father-
there's been an accident-the engine was thrown
off the track and" Further speech was prevented
by Maggie rushing towards him and clasping her
hand firmly over his mouth.
JOYS AND TRIALS.
331
"Hush!" she exclaimed sharply, but in a low
voice, while she cast an apprehensive glance towards
the next room. "My mother! Speak low! Now,
what is it?" But the boy did not answer, his eyes
resting in a fascination of terror on a new object in
the doorway, a tall, white-robed figure, with death-
like countenance and large eyes fixed sternly on him.
Maggie's look followed his.
"Mother!" she cried, springing towards her, and
throwing her arms about her. Mrs. Dean swiftly
released herself with what seemed superhuman
strength, and, standing there erect, with not a
muscle faltering, bade the boy tell his story. The
latter, whimpering with fright, repeated in detail what
he had told Maggie. Helen had now appeared on
the scene, and the three women stood listening with
blanched faces.
They learned that the accident had taken place
near home, on the farther side of the railroad bridge,
and that Pete Harmon, who had been on a drunken
spree for a week, had some connection with it.
They're a-bringing of him home now," the boy
ended, with stolid intent to accomplish the whole
of his errand; and his words sent a bodeful chill
to the hearts of his listeners.
66
"9
"I always told your father that Pete Harmon
but here strained nature gave way, and Mrs. Dean
would have fallen if both daughters had not sprung
to her assistance and supported her back to her chair.
Here she rallied a little, pushing aside the hand with
which Maggie held some restoring medicine to her

332
A GIRL GRADUATE.
#
lips, and giving brief, martial-like orders for the re-
ception of her husband.
A few moments later, a funeral-like procession of
men arrived, bearing the senseless figure of the
master of the house on a litter. Mrs. Dean would
have risen to receive them, but Maggie, inspired both
by a fear for her, and horror of the general scene,
uttered a protesting cry, and, falling on her knees at
her side, buried her face in her mother's breast. It
was Helen who led the way to the bedroom, and
assisted in placing her father on the bed, from which
he did not rise for months.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
THOMAS DEAN'S skill as a workman was well
known all along the road; and it was nothing
unusual for him to receive an order to visit another
point and oversee a piece of work. He was always
glad to respond to such a summons, which gave him
a day's respite from the shop, and a chance to take a
run over the road. He got out his engine, oiling and
polishing it with the pride a horseman feels in the
grooming of his favorite steed. Having served as
engineer several years when he was young, there was
no part in the construction of the locomotive he did
not understand. Like a true workman, he loved the
results of his labor, and, to his thinking, there was no
finer sight in the world than that of a shining little
black engine skimming over the track. He almost
envied the sight to the men at work in the fields,
pausing to look at him as he shot by with the speed
of light. He had the same sense of mastery here
that Miss Graham felt at her piano.
With his hand on the throttle-lever, and a watchful
eye bent along the line of track before him, he seemed
to make exultant bound after bound through space, to
measure and pass the blue distances before him with
333
334
A GIRL GRADUATE.
a glance. Thomas Dean was conscious for the most
part of being a very slow and uncouth specimen of
his kind, but behind his engine the feeling of glad
dominion took the place of every other. Half-shaped
thoughts, that at other times only oppressed him, now
presented themselves in some clear idea of duty
and useful action, so that he could breathe freely and
hold his head erect. In a silent, aspiring nature, such
feelings are akin to religious ecstasy. The musical
click of the engine, the noise and whir of the revolv-
ing wheels, blended in the engineer's imagination
with the sound of the deep-toned organ and uplifting
chant heard in church, raising feelings of worshipful
praise and thanksgiving.
Maggie used often, when a child, to go with her
father on expeditions of this kind. Nothing was to be
compared then to one of these long, glorious rides on
the engine. Sometimes her boy-playmate was per-
mitted to accompany them, and that was a day long
remembered by both. But the charm of this, with
other childhood sports, was lost as she grew into young
womanhood. This morning, however, she came out
on to the porch with her father, and when he told her
his plans for the day a wistful expression crept into
her eyes. "I wish I could go with you," she said. A
look of pleased surprise broke over her father's face.
"Would you like to go?" he asked. It would
seem like getting his little girl wholly back again to
see her perched once more in her old place in the
cab, while they went speeding past the fields and
woods together. But a shade of doubt crept over his
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
335
face after the first anticipative glow. "Your mother
couldn't spare you, I'm afraid."
“Oh, no, I couldn't go, of course," was the reply,
spoken in that resigned tone Maggie had fallen into
of late. 66
Good-by." With one of her sudden im-
pulses, she lifted her face for a kiss, which he gave
with another show of surprise, and a look of humble
gratitude that hurt her to see. He then descended
the steps and walked slowly out of the yard, Maggie
waving her hand to him as he turned at the gate,
then going back into the house.
It was near nightfall when Thomas Dean prepared
to return home, giving himself just time to make the
run before "No 7," the through freight, came along.
He was tired, and glad of the prospective rest of
evening, when he climbed to his place in the cab
and steamed slowly out of the station. He had
done a good day's work at some broken machinery,
and there was honest satisfaction in that thought;
but just now the sense of physical fatigue was upper-
most, subduing the exultant feelings of the morning
to a quieter mood, which the little locomotive seemed
to share, retracing its way at a smooth and decorous
rate. The engineer thought of them all at home, and
remembered what his wife had said that she should
get up that day, "doctor or no doctor." He recalled
Maggie's looks as she stood beside him on the porch,
the young spring sunshine falling about her. Soon
he caught sight of the village steeples and the court-
house dome. "No. 7" was probably not more than
a mile in the rear. He was drawing near the bridge
•
I
:
336
A GIRL GRADUATE.
spanning the Race and a deep gully at its side, and
had but to shoot across on to a side-track which the
switch-tender stood holding open for him, leaving
"No. 7" to come thundering by with its long line of
heavily loaded cars. But before he could do this,
his eye caught sight of an unaccustomed object on
the bridge. Peering forward through the gathering
dusk, he recognized Pete Harmon, whose swaying
figure, trying to span the wide spaces between the
planks, showed that he was in his usual condition.
The little engine whistled sharply, but the one to
whom this warning signal was addressed was in just
that state of drunken bravado which resists the least
attempt at interference. Instead of showing fright,
the poor fool slowly turned in his place, vainly trying
to straighten his toppling figure, while, with grotesque
gestures of mingled sport and defiance, he beckoned
the engineer to come on.
The next moment he recognized his old employer,
and every other feeling changed into furious rage.
He shook his fist, swung his hat insanely, and filled
the air with impotent curses. The engineer had
quickly reversed his engine, which still sent up
shriek after shriek of danger, while, leaning far out
of the cab, he wildly waved the intruder to one side.
And now another danger threatened from behind. A
second whistle sounded in the rear, and Thomas
Dean knew "No. 7" was bearing steadily down on
him. The next moment there was the signal of
"down brakes," but he knew it was too late. There
was a single chance of safety. Either he must let
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
337
loose the lever of the throttle-valve, leap ahead
across the bridge, mindless of the fate of the insen-
sate creature who stood in his way, or
There is but one choice in a crisis like this with
such a man as Thomas Dean, though he would never
admit he really made it. There was only a flash of
time between knowledge of what was coming and the
event; but it was long enough for the passage of
many thoughts. A quick pang of grief over the
destruction of his beautiful engine, a swift vision of
the evening home scene, his wife with pale, wasted
features heroically keeping her promise to sit up
until his return, and Maggie setting the table; a
prayerful gasp of thankfulness that she was not with
him, and then came the crash. He felt himself hurled
violently through the air down the steep embank-
ment. Consciousness had quite gone out when they
lifted the broken and bleeding frame to bear it home.
Long before Thomas Dean rose from his bed he
knew he was crippled for life, and could never return
to his old place in the shop. Another foreman was
employed, with a superintendent from the city, and a
new régime set in at the Locomotive Works.
Mrs. Dean forgot her own weakness, and rose at
once to the emergency.
"I hain't got no time to spend in convylessing,
she said, in reply to a word of caution from the
doctor. "If you want to fix me up some iron bitters,
you can, but I guess it'll be something besides iron
that keeps me goin' now."
The married daughter, who had meant to return to
338
A GIRL GRADUATE.
1
her own home about this time, remained a few weeks
longer, to help the family through the critical period
of this new calamity.
The circumstances of the accident were quickly
noised abroad, and the little community in which the
engineer lived, half of whom did not know him by
sight, became exultingly conscious that it had a hero
in its midst. Glowing accounts of his courageous
deed were printed in the town newspapers, and
copied in larger journals abroad. Rector Fay, who
was not without an æsthetic appreciation of a fine
action, and who welcomed any occasion for an effec-
tive sermon, preached the following Sunday on "Ob-
scure Heroes," and the narrow dimensions of St.
Luke's were filled with a delighted congregation.
Maggie read the announcement of the sermon in the
Weekly Gazette, with a feeling of angry humiliation.
She pointed it out to Helen, who read it quietly
through without apparent feeling of any kind.
"It is impertinent!" said Maggie, in a voice of
quavering excitement.
"It is ignorant," her sister calmly replied, and the
subject was dropped between them.
Some public-spirited citizens undertook to raise a
subscription for the benefit of the injured man, and
here Maggie's pride received a new injury. Her
mother also was highly displeased.
"Subscription!" she exclaimed. "If that is Mr.
Fay's doings, you can tell him to stop it right off,"
she said to one of the neighbors. "When Thomas
Dean and his family come on the town for support,
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
339
we'll let 'em know.
Subscription, indeed!" she
repeated, in high scorn. "They'd better get up a
subscription to paint the rectory. I'm sure it needs
it bad enough."
Aside from this matter of the subscription, Mrs.
Dean bore the publicity of her present situation with
her usual feeling of honest desert. She was, in truth,
full of bristling pride in the accident, though she
spoke slightingly of her husband's behavior, as some-
thing that might contain a natural surprise for the
rest of the world, but could not be expected to aston-
ish her. She could have told people that was the
way Thomas Dean would behave a man that would
go round to another door rather than disturb their
old Nancy, asleep on the threshold. Nancy was an
ancient Maltese, who had long outlived her useful-
ness, and had the temper of Petruchio's Kate.
A still deeper cause for gratification on Mrs. Dean's
part lay in the thought that they could afford a spell
of sickness if they chose. The little fund at the bank,
which she and her husband had taken such honest
pride in putting by, was now as proudly drawn on,
and this, with the income derived from a small acci-
dent policy, enabled the family to present the same
brave and independent front to the world as before.
The same impulse which prompted the discourse
on "Obscure Heroes" led Rector Fay to pay a few
visits to his parishioner's bedside, and aroused a
genuine if not deep interest in what he regarded a
new object of psychological study. Usually, the
minister's interest flagged before the end of his
340
A GIRL GRADUATE.
visit, for, like most imaginative people, Mr. Fay
found it easier to occupy himself with his own con-
ceptions of men and women than patiently to study
them from their own point of view. He had the
same liking for ideality in men's actions as for the
atmospheric tone of a picture; but the ideality of a
nature like Thomas Dean's is an elusive quality, which
responds to but a single touchstone—sincerity. The
rector, after a few visits in which he vainly tried to
sound the undiscovered side of the hurt engineer,
wearied of the effort, and was forced to the conclu-
sion that a man may be capable, under pressing cir-
cumstances, of very striking behavior, yet be unde-
niably dull and uninteresting in the main. He even
began to question whether every act of so-called
courage and self-sacrifice may not be accounted for
on very plain cerebral processes, and if blind physi-
cal force and instinct are not at the bottom of most
of the world's boasted moral heroism?
Miss Graham, who never shared the rector's con-
clusions when she knew them, suffered a similar dis-
appointment. She also had a love of psychological
analysis, and Thomas Dean became an object of
almost morbid curiosity with her at this time. She
hung eagerly on every word, construing each to
accord with far-fetched theories of her own. The
sick man seemed to understand this expectant atti-
tude of some of his friends, and their disappointment.
He was, however, quite unable to fulfil the dramatic
requirements of the situation, and a perplexing
sense of failure came over him at times, together
+
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
341
with that irritated feeling we all have when held
to a standard we never professed. Something of
this feeling came out one day in a conversation with
Miss Graham, whose company he was growing to
like very well, except for those processes of moral
vivisection to which she subjected him from time to
time. She had been praising him, not very tactfully,
for his patience and the resigned spirit he had shown
during his sickness.
"I dunno whether to call it resigned or not," he
replied. "I guess I ain't one o' the kind that makes
much fuss. But ef anybody thinks I wouldn't rather
be back in the shop, bossin' the hands, than lyin'
here" He paused with a discouraged sense of the
uselessness of words to describe some feelings.
There was another reason for his discontent, un-
connected with the thought of his own condition,
and which his listener understood. Affairs were
not going as well at the "Works" as before the
loss of the old foreman, whose rule had been both
gentle and firm, and whom long acquaintance had
endeared to most of the men. The new superin-
tendent had brought better instructed ways with
him from the city, he thought, but the men were dis-
satisfied, and there were rumors of coming trouble.
"I wouldn't worry about that. They'll get along,"
his visitor answered understandingly. "It's perfectly
natural, of course, that you should want to be back in
your old place. The Lord doesn't give a man such
physical energy as you have without meaning he
should use it." Miss Graham's familiarity with the
342
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Lord's purposes never failed her.
are the best workman on the road."
"I am told you
"I guess there's others as good as me." Praise
from unprofessional sources affected Thomas Dean
as it does most honest workers. "Looks as if some
of 'em might get ahead if they tried," he added,
moving his huge weight painfully in bed.
"Oh, you mustn't be discouraged. You'll be up
again soon, and, even if you are not, it's a comfort to
think neither you nor your family will suffer." This
in allusion to a pension recently voted the engineer
by his former employers. Mrs. Dean had regarded
this act as only a just reward of merit.
"This accident has done one good thing, at least,"
Miss Graham continued. "It has proved that corpo-
rations do sometimes have souls. That's what comes
of being a hero," she ended lightly. A displeased
frown appeared on Thomas Dean's face.
"I ain't no hero," he broke out, in feeble-voiced
protest. "Excuse me, ma'am, but I'd like to say a
word 'bout that."
Miss Graham bent eagerly forward to listen. Now,
at last, she was about to gain some clew to the nature
of this silent, restrained man.
"I've been turnin' it over in my mind," he went
on, fixing his large, gaunt gaze on her, "but I dunno
as I can make it plain what I mean." He paused,
with that look of perplexed distress that always came
into his face during his rare attempts at self-expres-
sion.
"Folks hev ben makin' a great fuss over what I
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
343
did," he began again, a thin flush rising to his cheek.
"Now, what I want to say is, they'd ought to know
that just because Pete Harmon was drunk and didn't
know what he was about, was all the more reason
why I shouldn't run him down. Would a man step
on a blind baby crawlin' across his path?"
"Some men would," Miss Graham made candid
reply, "especially if they had no choice than to fall
backwards over a precipice. Most people think it
would only have been a just punishment if Pete
Harmon had been killed."
"People will think what they please, I s'pose,"
in a discouraged tone. "And as to punishin', mebbe
I was put on to that engine to run over Pete Harmon
and punish him, and mebbe I wa'n't. Mebbe it was
for just the other thing, to take care of him and see
he didn't get no harm. Anyway, I'd ruther the Lord
would do his own punishin'."
"I wouldn't," his listener promptly replied. "I'm
one that believes the Lord works through human in-
struments. Suppose David had talked like that
when he went out to slay the Philistines?'
"There ain't no Philistines livin' round Litchfield
that I knows on," was the undisturbed answer.
"How did David behave to Saul the time they were
alone together in the cave?"
Miss Graham laughed and gave up the argument,
cunningly alleging in excuse that the sick man's
fever was rising, and he ought not to talk any more.
Afterwards she said to Maggie, standing at her side,
as she instructed her in a new kind of broth, "There's
344
A GIRL GRADUATE.
no use in trying to make a hero of your father. He
won't let us."
"I don't know what you mean by hero," Maggie
replied, rather proudly. "It was natural my father
should do what he did."
"That may be. All goodness is natural, at least
that is what my religion teaches; but that doesn't
seem to hinder people's being a good deal surprised
when they see it."
"I don't know why people should be surprised. If
you mean that a man like my father"
Maggie paused, finding it difficult to explain. Her
sensitive nature was keenly alive during these days,
and the atmosphere of public comment in which the
family were now living elated and depressed her by
turns. She was sincerely proud of this new revela-
tion of her father's character, at the same time that
she was both hurt and angry over the manner in
which the general approbation of his conduct was
expressed. The assumption that because her father
was a workingman and uneducated - the Gazette
had spoken of him as "an illiterate but illustrious
son of fame”—his action was the more meritorious,
offended her deeply; while the other hypothesis,
which formed the motive of the discourse on
66 Ob-
scure Heroes," that this very social insignificance
rendered such action more probable,—it being well
known that Grace Darling and other examples of
that kind owned a humble origin, - pleased her still
less. Maggie found herself greatly perplexed, and
was obliged to re-arrange her ideas of the heroic.
$
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
345
1.
At first, the better knowledge gained of her father
had the effect only to make her feel less acquainted
with him than before. She had also a sense of fail-
ing duty towards him. Healthy youth is apt to
be repelled from every form of physical weakness,
and Maggie had often been ashamed of the feeling
which made her shrink from the company of the sick
and the very old. The undemonstrative temper of
this family hindered their mutual helpfulness in
many ways. Maggie had often envied the ease and
confidence which marked the relation between Bertha
Fay and her father; but the barrier of an unshared
mental life is hard to overcome, and it was not alto-
gether her fault that she could not get nearer her
father.
Thomas Dean observed his daughter attentively at
this time. He was better now, and able to sit bol-
stered up in bed. The hours dragged by with leaden
feet, and he occupied the time counting the bottles
on the bureau, and in the study of a highly colored
lithograph of Rebecca at the Well, which hung at
the foot of the bed. He looked at his thin, weak
hands, big and clumsy as before, with the grime of
the workshop, which years of toil had made part of the
original texture, still staining the finger-tips, turning
them wonderingly about like a child. This feeling
of self-bewilderment increased when he caught sight
of his gaunt, sunken features in the little mirror;
while his voice, reduced to a fine, quavering treble,
filled him with fresh dismay every time he heard it.
"I feel sorry for your father, lying there day after
346
A GIRL GRADUATE.
day. It is much harder for him than it would be for
a less active man," said Miss Graham to Maggie one
day. "Can't you do something to amuse him?"
Maggie flushed guiltily, for the question addressed
itself to an awakening conscience. There were many
devices to which she had resort in imagination, to
relieve the tedium of her father's sick-room, which
an unaccountable feeling of shyness held her back
from putting into execution. Ashamed that her
filial remissness had been noticed by others, she seized
the first expedient that offered itself. Her father
was a noted checker-player among his mates, and,
taking the checker-board, Maggie went to the bed-
side and offered to play a game with him. He looked
surprised but pleased also, and readily consented.
"Of course you'll beat me," she said, as she perched
herself on the side of the bed, "but perhaps it will
help to pass the time." Then conscious this was not
spoken with the readiest tact, she added, "You beat
everybody else, don't you?"
"Well, I don't know," was the reply, spoken in a
gratified but modest tone. "I guess not everybody.
There was Henry Parsons, he got so he could beat
me-used to be nip and tuck between us sometimes.
Henry's pretty long-headed."
Maggie was busy disposing the pieces on the board,
and did not make a direct reply.
"And Helen-she plays a pretty good game,
doesn't she?"
Her father made a half-articulate sound of assent,
loyally forbearing to enter on the strict merits of this
.
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
347
!
question. "Checkers ain't much of a woman's game,
anyhow,” he added apologetically.
Maggie made the first move, and the game pro-
ceeded in silence for a while. Her intentions were
excellent, but it was difficult to keep her thoughts
from straying.
"What do you mean by 'long-headed'?" she
asked, dreamily, as she moved one of the black
pieces to an adjacent square.
"I mean he wouldn't have made such a move as
that, and let me jump three men right into the king-
row," her father replied, indicating her mistake with
his long, bony finger. Thomas Dean pretended to
few accomplishments, but the thing he undertook to
do he did well. A bad move in a game of draughts
afflicted him in about the same way as a piece of
poor workmanship in the shop. Maggie uttered an
exclamation, and hastily replaced her piece, then,
after a moment's deliberation, moved it in another
direction.
“Now, Henry Parsons wouldn't have done that
neither. He would 'a' moved this man-so," her
father corrected her again, pointing to another piece.
"That would have blocked me on this side of the
board so's't I'd have to move over here. Then he'd 'a'
stepped in between these two men, and the next
move after he'd 'a' jumped this one, and so moved on
up to the king-row.'
""
This intricate process Maggie saw through clearly
enough when it was explained to her, but it would
have been impossible beforehand.
:
..
348
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
"And what would Henry Parsons do now?" she
asked, with a slightly satiric accent, when her turn
came again. "Yes," she went on, smiling a little,
"I mean Mr. Parsons shall play this game. Every
man has a right to be tried by his peers. It's too
silly, your playing with me. Besides, I want to
learn," she made haste to add, as she noted the
troubled look on her father's face.
He smiled and humored her whim, instructing her
in each succeeding move, save one or two she was
quick enough to detect for herself, but which she
declared Mr. Parsons should receive no credit for.
"Then, if you two have gone into pardnership, I
may as well give up," her father said, with mild
humor. Maggie flushed at this, but let it pass, know-
ing the innocent intention underlying the words.
"Why, we shall keep on doing this forever," she
said, when they had reached the last stage of the
game, where one of her kings stood barricaded by the
enemy, and the remaining two pieces danced coquet-
tishly back and forth in the double corner.
"Yes, it's a draw game."
"What's that?"
"A game in which neither beats," she repeated, after
her father had explained. "Well, I don't think much
of the virtue of 'longheadedness' if that is all it can
accomplish. I choose this game shall have an honest
ending. There!" pushing her man directly in the
adversary's way, where it was bound to be captured.
"Serves Mr. Parsons right!" she ended, closing the
board. "I don't know what business he had to in-
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
349
terfere, anyway. Now, I'm going to get you some-
thing to eat."
Maggie could sometimes speak in this careless and
apparently natural manner of Henry Parsons, while
at other times she could with difficulty bring herself
to mention his name. She had read Helen's letters
many times, and the effect had been to so re-establish
the belief, hardly needed, in her lover's continued
loyalty, that it seemed at times equivalent to a com-
plete reconciliation between them. It was as if the
letters had been written to her, and she were reading
them with the writer's full consent and knowledge.
These undefined feelings entered unconsciously into
her behavior, as in the little conceit she had practised
in the game of checkers. She coquetted with the
image of her lover much as she would have done with
the man himself had he been present.
At other times, this confidence was overlaid by a
little cloud of doubt and self-distrust. She remem-
bered that her understanding of Henry Parsons's
feeling did not stand for any enlightenment on his
part towards her, or point the way to it. She thought
she knew her old playmate well, but a woman seldom
estimates a man's modesty aright, which may be as
delicate and priceless a quality of his nature as of
hers; and as weeks went by, after Helen's departure,
and the letters naturally ceased coming, it often seemed
to Maggie she had received a direct rebuff. One day,
soon after the accident, she brought her father a letter
bearing a Dakota postmark, which he asked her to
open and read to him. It was short, but of friendly
350
A GIRL GRADUATE.
.:
tone, the writer expressing deep sympathy for the
injured man, and an earnest desire for further news
of him. Thomas Dean listened with a gratified coun-
tenance, and made Maggie read the letter again.
"It had oughter be answered," he said, when she
had finished.
"Mother will answer it," she replied, not meeting
his glance; but Mrs. Dean was unused to exercise
with the pen, averring she had plenty to do without
that, and Maggie was obliged to act as scribe.
"What shall I say?" she asked, dipping her pen in
the ink-bottle.
“Tell him we're much obliged for the letter, and
hope he'll write often. Say we ain't forgot how to
miss him, and are lookin' to see him back here on a
visit before long."
Maggie thought she would not say just that, but
asked no further instructions, writing a brief note of
thanks, strictly impersonal and business-like. She
tried to make it perfectly polite, but could not fore-
see how the politeness might seem but cool civility
to the reader. Conscious of a good deal of kindness
within, she was not aware how closely she had
guarded its expression, and looked for an answer
to her letter. But Henry Parsons, pained anew by
what seemed to him the very essence of arctic frigid-
ity done in six lines of a young woman's flowing
penmanship, did not write again. So keen was his
disappointment that he was obliged to ask himself
what it was he had expected, and what had been his
real motive in writing to Maggie's father. He had
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
351
believed it at the time to be honest anxiety for his
friend; but this appeared now a mere subterfuge,
which he tortured himself into thinking Maggie had
seen through at once, and punished as it deserved.
In pursuit of the same daughterly impulse which
led to the game of checkers, Maggie approached
her father's bedside, a day or two after, with a book
in her hand, and offered to read to him.
He gave wondering assent, and, seating herself, she
began the story of Oliver Twist. She could not tell
whether her father listened very well or not, and had
an uneasy sense he was watching her instead; but
her experiment was rewarded the next day by a ques-
tion from him, —
"Is there anything more to that story you was
readin'?"
"Oh, yes," she replied, "a whole bookful. Shall
I read to you again?”
"Well, I got kinder interested," he said, with a
shamefaced look.
Maggie was deep in the account of Oliver's walk
to London, when her mother entered the room, and
viewed the proceedings with a disapproving eye.
"I don't know about this," she said. "I've heard
that readin''s bad for sick folks. It makes 'em
flighty."
66
Very well," Maggie replied, resignedly closing
the book; but her father received this interruption
with an impatience he seldom manifested.
"I guess I ain't goin' to get very flighty over a
made-up story in a book," he said, and turned a look
•
352
A GIRL GRADUATE.
•
toward Maggie that plainly bade her continue her
reading. Mrs. Dean attempted no further argu-
ment, only shrugged her shoulders, as much as to
say she washed her hands of the affair, and left the
room.
The readings occurred regularly every day after
this; and a careful observer might have noted the
dawn of a new intellectual life in the disabled engi-
neer, who, bereft of the exercise of those physical
faculties which had hitherto played so important a
part in his life, was now thrown back on unused
mental qualities. He listened to Maggie's reading
with growing interest and intelligence, and even fell
into the habit of picking up the book she left within
reach, and going on with the story himself.
In this way they read nearly all of Dickens together,
and had begun on Scott. A new feeling of compan-
ionship began to spring up between father and daugh-
ter. It was a genuine comfort to Maggie to be able
to refer to Mr. Mantalini and Pleasant Riderhood
with an assurance of being understood. Mrs. Dean
continued to look on the readings with good-natured
scorn, declaring the family was getting quite too "lit-
terary" for her. She never knew a Weatherby that
cared anything for books.
Months had worn away before Thomas Dean was
able to sit up in his wheeled chair, the highest stage
of physical restoration he would ever reach. This
was an epoch-making day in the little household.
The wreck of strong, self-reliant manhood on which
the family had leaned never seemed so complete as
THE ENGINEER'S CHOICE.
353
at the sight of that large, emaciated frame, sitting in
bent posture, with limbs twisted helplessly under-
neath, and pathetic eyes speaking inward anguish
and despair. Maggie could not bear the sight, and
escaped to her room, to give way to passionate weep-
ing. Her love for her father was of deeper root than
she knew, combining memories of her happy, shel-
tered childhood with growing filial yearning and
compassion, difficult to explain. She was coming to
learn the strength and meaning of the ties of nature,
how truly and necessarily she fitted into those rela-
tions in which she had been born. The sight of
her father, sitting quiet and uncomplaining in the
wheeled chair day after day, could never become
common to her, but continually touched both heart
and imagination anew, where sympathy gave rise
sometimes to admiration, then to pain.
66
Why is it the sight of a certain sort of goodness
hurts us, instead of making us glad?" was one of
the questions she put in a letter to her brother at
this time; and he replied that such feeling is part
of the universal divine compassion covering the world
and linking men and women to its source.
She was to see John Norton soon. The exacting
duties of the past few months had imposed some
physical strain on her; and as she meant to resume
teaching in the fall, and needed rest and recuperation,
she accepted an invitation from Helen to spend part
of the long vacation in Greenville.
4
C
CHAPTER XX.
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
MAGGIE had several semi-philosophical talks with
her brother-in-law during her visit; but she profited
less by the preceptive teaching thus afforded than
by daily companionship with the teacher. Her regard
for John Norton grew constantly. The young min-
ister had none of the habits of the recluse. Except
for a few busy hours in the forenoon, his time was
spent in active work outside his study. He was an
ardent student of sociology, and a zealous but en-
lightened philanthropist. Settled in his new pasto-
rate, he had at once organized a number of branch
societies of a mixed social and literary character, in
each of which he brought to bear the full powers of a
strong, enthusiastic nature, capable of engendering
enthusiasm in others. Maggie found herself, she did
not know how, drawn into immediate co-operation with
these different enterprises. She went with Helen to
the Sewing Circle, blistering her hands in cutting
nightgowns for some poor children, and accompanied
John regularly to the Literary Union,—to get points
for Miss Graham, she said.
"If I lived in Greenville, I think I should become
a useful member of society," she wrote that friend.
"Next to John's capacity for work himself is his
354
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
355
faculty for setting other people to work. All at
once, while you suppose you are attending to your
own affairs, you find yourself plunged in some new
scheme of his, and working for it as furiously as he
is. After a while it may occur to you, if you are a
reflective creature like myself, that the real source of
your enthusiasm is not the Girls' Sewing School nor
the Cruelty to Animals Society, but John Norton. I
had the bad taste to hint something of this kind to
him once, but he didn't like it. He likes his work
better than he likes himself, and has the least personal
vanity of any one I know. He is a favorite with
the young people, and all the young women adore
him without being the least in love with him. I
think they envy me because I am Helen's sister. As
for Helen, she seems perfectly happy, though in her
usual, unobtrusive fashion. John is devoted to her,
not in any foolishly demonstrative way, but in con-
stant thoughtfulness. He asks her advice about
everything, even to the length of his sermons; but I
think that is because she never tells him to shorten
them. It is more important that John should ex-
press his full thought,' she says, 'than that the people
should get home to dinner.' Altogether, they're
happy and useful couple, and you'll find me a highly
improved character when I come home."
"
Helen watched the growing intimacy between her
husband and her sister with approving eyes and a re-
lieved sense of responsibility. Pride in her husband's
work and influence, and her perfect trust in him, made
any feeling of envy impossible, towards Maggie or
356
A GIRL GRADUATE.
any one else.
She had not married a man like John
Norton expecting to retain the rich beneficence of
such a nature for her own private uses. It would
show poor regard for the great new possession that
had fallen to her to envy its power of helpful service
to others. Marital love, like the religious sentiment,
is to the worthiest souls but another means of human
helpfulness. Her husband was to Helen Dean like
the sun; she rejoiced in his power to shine. A min-
ister's wife holds a delicate and difficult position, but
which is relieved of many of its perplexities when a
man of the sound, upright nature of John Norton is
the minister. Much of the false sentiment attaching
to the pastoral side of his office, he had always held
in healthy dislike. He was not lacking in sympathy,
but it was of the kind that seeks to impart a noble
self-reliance, and does not degrade itself to the cosset-
ing cares of the sick-room and nursery.
Maggie remained with her sister until the end of
the long vacation. She was looking forward to her
return home, and to her work in the schoolroom, with
happy anticipations, when she received news, in a
letter from Miss Graham, that caused her one of the
sharpest disappointments of her life. Her school had
been given to some one else, to the woman who had
taken her place in the spring; the reason assigned
being that Mrs. Edfield was a widow with young chil-
dren to support, who needed the financial aid the
position would bestow more than Maggie did.
Maggie's sense of injury and indignation nearly
made her ill at first. Her pride also had received a
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
357
sharp blow. She had felt so secure in her position,,
so confident of the merit and success of her labors,
and of their indispensable character, that this sudden
disappointment fell like a disgrace, except for that
old, irretrievable sense of injustice which had afflicted
her before, and now burned anew.
"It is not right," she said to her brother, in a
choked, indignant voice. "It is not right. Do
you think it is?" looking up at him with a quiver-
ing face.
He stood pulling his beard in the way he had when
in a thoughtful or disturbed state of mind, with an
expression on his face as nearly approaching dis-
pleasure as ever rested there.
"It certainly doesn't look so now,” he replied, care-
fully, divided between his wish to comfort Maggie
and love of truth.
"Her being a widow has nothing to do with it,"
Maggie continued, warmly.
"I wouldn't say it had nothing' to do with it.
Cases sometimes arise where a Board has a right to
decide the claims of a candidate on the ground of
personal necessity, though it's usually done at some
risk to the public service. Do you know this Mrs.
Edfield?"
"Know her! I don't know her as well as the Board
does," was the quick reply. "She has been in the
school twice before, and both times was discharged
for incompetency."
"I wouldn't say that, Maggie. It doesn't sound
well," her sister interposed.
358
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"I'm not saying it. I'm only telling John. She's
been a genteel pensioner on the charities of Litchfield
ever since her husband was drowned, at a Sunday-
school picnic three years ago," Maggie explained.
Her listener pulled his mustache to hide a smile over
the sarcastic minuteness of this account.
“Of course, it was much more pathetic, his being
drowned at a Sunday-school picnic," she added,
catching a hint of encouragement from his manner.
66
Maggie!" Helen said, reprovingly.
"How does it happen you have no contract?" John
asked. “I thought the contracts were drawn up and
signed in the early summer.'
""
"So they are; but I couldn't sign then, on account
of father," in a trembling voice. "But that is no
excuse. There was a perfect understanding about
the matter. I was to have the place if I wanted it.
I wrote to the secretary of the Board just before I
He didn't answer the letter, but I
thought that was only an oversight.”
came away.
John Norton shook his head. Whether in condem-
nation of her carelessness, or of the secretary's cow-
ardice, Maggie did not know.
66
Why don't you write to Judge Foster?" her
sister asked. "You have received no official notice.
Perhaps it is only a rumor Miss Graham has heard."
Maggie turned abruptly away. "I don't wish to
write to Judge Foster," she said.
66
'Why, I thought he was a very good friend of
yours," Helen answered, in some surprise. "I am
sure he would help you."
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
359
"I shall not ask him to help me," was the reply,
still more shortly spoken. Helen and her husband
looked at each other with puzzled faces.
"I'm sorry, dear," the first said, putting an arm
about her, "but you mustn't make it harder by.
fretting. You will find something else to do," she
added, with attempted cheerfulness.
"You can go
on with your German."
"Yes, there's no loss without some gain," John
said. "This time, the gain is ours.
You can stay
another month in Greenville."
"Oh, no; I must not," Maggie hurriedly replied.
"I have staid too long already.
Besides, you
wouldn't find me agreeable company," looking up
at her brother, with a rueful smile. "There'll be no
living with me now."
"I hope father won't find it so," Helen said, with a
note of anxiety.
"I shall try not to hurt father."
John Norton, standing near, put out his hand, and
began stroking Maggie's hair with a kind, quieting
touch.
"I shouldn't mind it," she said, with a little break
in her voice, and looking at him through her tears,
"if I hadn't always tried to do my best; studying
new ways to interest the children, and trying to im-
prove my work in every way I could. But that is all
that people care. There's no use in trying to be dif-
ferent from anybody else. I had better have gone on
in the same old way the rest did, — singing the capi-
tals, and repeating the multiplication table backwards.”
360
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Her brother made no response to this, patting her
cheek and turning away. It was as well to let this
little burst of injured feeling expend itself. He
knew from his own experience how real, and to a
degree just, this feeling was.
He had not spent
three years in the itinerant service of the missionary
field, before settling down to his present charge,
without having illustrated several times over that
portion of the sower's parable relating to the seed
that fell on stony places.
Maggie's disappointment was the sharper that it
was the first of its kind. In her youthful confidence
she had imagined that her efforts to improve the
rusty methods of her predecessors had produced a
marked impression on the Board and the public at
large, and that she had become, in a sense, a necessary
factor in the work in which she was engaged. If Miss
Graham had been with her at this time, she would
have reminded her of the small relative importance
even the greatest actors on this little human stage
can attain, by quoting a line from her favorite:
Everybody is needed in this world; nobody is
needed much."
66
Miss Graham's letter contained other news.
Litchfield, including the entire county of the
same name, was about to celebrate its semi-centen-
nial anniversary. The celebration was to take place
the middle of September, and to consist of a long
processional parade, a grove meeting with patriotic
songs and speeches, and an open-air banquet.
As daughter of one of the early settlers, Miss
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
361
Graham had taken an active interest in the celebra-
tion, from its inception; but her letter failed to arouse
much interest in Maggie until towards the last, when
she casually mentioned that Henry Parsons, who was
expected home about this time, had been invited to
deliver an address. Litchfield wished to honor itself
in its younger generation, as well as in reminiscences
of the older.
"His grandfather was one of the twelve original
settlers," Miss Graham wrote. 66
"I don't know why
the thirteenth wasn't as original as the rest, but, as
my father also happened to be one of the twelve, I
can't be expected to take great pains to find out.
It's queer the way things come about that the son
of the worthless Tim Parsons should be discovered to
be the grandson of Henry the First. I wonder if the
fact that the younger Henry is doing pretty well had
anything to do with the discovery. They say he has
made a handsome profit for Mr. Danvers out there.
Squire Parsons was the foremost man in the county
in his day. It was he and my father who laid out
the site of the present village, and built the first
turnpike road. I dare say, though, that his grandson
would have preferred to keep the line of good be-
havior unbroken through the three generations. He
used to feel his father's disgrace very keenly, I am
told." Maggie did not like this last sentence, and
frowned a little as she read it.
The letter contained two postscripts, one to the
effect that there was a threatened outbreak at the
Locomotive Works, the result of the men's increased
362
A GIRL GRADUATE,
dislike of the new superintendent; and that her
father was much disturbed over it.
The second told the news of Laura Danvers's return
home. She had spent the summer with a friend in
the East. "She is greatly improved, and not in looks
only," Miss Graham wrote. "She is a young woman
of more than ordinary intelligence and sense. She
has evidently been under some new influences, during
her absence, very different from those she was brought
up under. She is actually thinking of studying medi-
cine. I never thought of Laura Danvers turning
strong-minded."
This letter had a depressing effect on Maggie, and
increased the feeling of discontent with which she
prepared to return home. She tried to banish the
thought of Henry Parsons from her mind, which, in
consequence, kept returning, being inevitably accom-
panied by the remembrance of his business connec-
tions with Mr. Danvers. She was proud of the honor
his native village had bestowed on him; at the same
time she was a little piqued at it.
Meantime her disappointment about the school re-
mained to dampen her spirits and chill that natural
ardor and happy self-confidence which were like
wings to her. She tried to excuse what she recog-
nized as an unhealthy mental state by saying she
had nothing to look forward to; and was complain-
ing to John Norton of the dull routine of the life she
was returning to, as they stood together on the sta-
tion-platform, waiting for the train, when he put a
little book in her hand, paper-bound, and numbered
as one of a series.
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
363
"Read that on your way home,” he said.
near forgetting to give it to you.
She looked at it, and raised her eyebrows.
"A tract?”
"Yes, but one of the kind that makes
the name less."
"I came
you
dislike
"Blessed be Drudgery," she said, reading the
title aloud. "Doesn't the title involve a contradic-
tion of terms?"
"Read it, and see," was the answer.
She turned the leaf and glanced curiously down
the first page. "I see what it is the writer tries to
prove," she said, with a touch of saucy assurance.
"He begins by showing that drudgery, rightly under-
stood, is no drudgery at all. Then, having proved
it something very different, he calls it blessed.'"
6
"That will do very well, considering you've only
read half a page. You'd make a good reviewer. But
if he really proves it, why shouldn't we thank instead
of blame him? This little pamphlet has done a world
of good," Norton continued, taking it in his hand,
and turning the leaves. “I have distributed hun-
dreds of copies among poor, hard-working people,
who have thanked me afterwards with tears in their
eyes. I would rather have written a sermon like that
than the Principia."
"Why, John!"
"I don't say the Principia isn't the greater work
of the two; but just because this seems the smaller,
simpler thing to do, I should like to have done it. I
don't care for the big things. I couldn't have written
864
A GIRL GRADUATE.
the Principia, anyway; but I envy any man the
power to put some glory and beauty into what is
called the common side of life. Some day, we
shall have grown too wise and reverent to call any
side common.'
The shriek of the incoming train prevented fur
ther talk, and a moment after Maggie was seated in
the car.
She smiled a good-by to John through the
window as the train moved out of the station, at-
tended to the various preliminaries of her journey,
and then, adjusting herself in the corner of the seat,
read the little pamphlet. It proved to contain just
that word of brave and kindly counsel she needed,
and she finished it in a fine glow of enthusiasm, which
warmed her heart and spread the radiance of a new,
inspiring thought over her face; so that a weary
fellow-passenger, sitting opposite, looked at her ad-
miringly, and wondered what she was thinking about.
Yet the lesson of the little tract was not new. The
same theme, in some form or other, filled most of the
pulpit discourses she heard. Life's trials, rightly
understood, are the highest means given us to enrich
and discipline character; but here in this little tract,
owing either to her mood or the writer's skill, the
thought, which seemed trite enough before, was pre-
sented in a way to leave a strong and vivid impres-
sion, opening a sealed fountain of gratitude, tender-
ness, and trust within. "My daily task, whatever it
be, that is what mainly educates me," was one of
the sentences which kept singing itself over in
Maggie's memory. "It is the angel aim and standard
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
365
in an act that consecrates it," was another she marked
with her pencil. But the words that stirred her
most were found a few lines farther on. "Have
you never met humble men and women, who read
little, who know little, yet who have a certain fasci-
nation, as of fineness, lurking about them? Know
them, and you are likely to find them persons who
have put so much thought and honesty and consci-
entious trying into their common work that finally
these qualities have come to permeate not their work
only, but so much of their being that they are fine-
fibred within, even if on the outside the rough bark
clings."
66
My father!" thought Maggie, with a swelling
pressure, like an ache, in her breast, and a quick
rush of tears which she would not let fall. Her
heart went out in a little impulse of love and expec-
tation to the cottage where she was born, and to the
maimed and crippled figure of her father, sitting in
his wheeled chair and counting the minutes until
her return. Her discontent still remained in part,
and there were a hundred things she did not under-
stand and would not pretend to approve of. Per-
haps, though, she should not have been any better
contented had she been born to some high, privileged
order of existence, the daughter of the secretary of
state or some distinguished hero, and certainly she
should have missed some things. This discontent
had never taken the form of wishing to be anybody
but herself, and without that she began to perceive
she could not greatly alter surrounding circumstances.
366
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
Her father was boyishly glad to get her back again,
receiving her with a humble gratitude and pride that
made her reproach herself for remaining away so long,
and give him a voluntary promise never to leave him
again.
“Wal, I sha'n't hold you to that," he said, “but
let it be a long time first."
"I hope it won't be till the fall sewing's done,"
her mother put in. "Seems as if everything 'd give
out at once. I guess it's just as well you didn't get
There's enough for us both to do at
the school.
home."
Maggie's mental reply to this was that if she had
got the school she could have hired a seamstress, to
say nothing of a new fall suit and a set of Ruskin she
had meant to buy. Her mother's reasoning was apt
to begin at the wrong end, but she envied her that
undisturbed complacency which can always turn a
disadvantageous circumstance into a benefit.
others who ventured to refer to her disappointment,
Maggie replied with a show of indifference.
To
"Of course, if our schools have become charitable
institutions, I have no claim to the place," she said,
and dismissed the topic.
The town was full of excitement over the coming
celebration. The lines of social distinction were
changing, and everybody was engaged in computing
the length of his ancestral connection with the county.
There was a great deal of talk about the original set-
tlers, and Maggie began to see that it might be quite
an advantage to have had a grandfather; but hers
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
367
slept under a little decaying headstone in an obscure
corner of an English churchyard.
"I can just remember Uncle John drivin' into the
village in a canvas wagon when I was a little shaver
'bout nine years old," her father said, one day, in ru-
minative fashion. "There wa'n't but one store in
the place then, besides a blacksmith's shop on the
corner where the court-house stands."
“You came with your Uncle John from England?
said Maggie, who had caught the general infection of
family reminiscence, and was willing to review a his-
tory she was already familiar with.
“Yes. When my father and mother died, Uncle
John took charge of me and sister Letty. He hadn't
much to do with either 'xcept a few pounds he'd
saved to emigrate to America, and he had eight chil-
dren of his own."
""
"I think he must have been a very good man,"
said Maggie, thoughtfully. She occupied a low seat
near her father's chair, and rested her cheek against
the arm.
"Sister Letty died," her father continued, his voice
sinking a little. She wa'n't never over-strong, and
the passage was too much for her. She had blue eyes
like yours, but she wa'n't much like you other ways.
She was always so quiet and uncomplainin', one o'
the kind that seems easy to die. I used to think
Uncle John didn't miss her so much as he would
one o' his own children, — I don't suppose you could
really expect him to; but I missed her a good
deal," drawing a long breath.
368
A GIRL GRADUATE.
!
"Were you homesick after she died?" Maggie
asked.
66
'No, I can't 'xactly say I was homesick. I hadn't
nothin' to be homesick for 'xcept my father's and
mother's graves. And I had Letty's grave here.
And Uncle John always dealt fair enough by me."
"I don't know why he shouldn't. Tell me about
my grandfather.”
"Wal, I don't remember much about him; he died
when Letty was a little thing, just toddlin' 'round.
He wa'n't as pushin' a kind o' man as my Uncle
John, and he'd ben unlucky all his life. I guess he
got kinder discouraged."
This picture was not an enlivening one, and Maggie
asked no more questions.
When the day of celebration came round, she
went with her mother and Miss Graham to the grove
where the exercises were to take place.
Mrs. Dean, whose especial claim to distinction, as a
Weatherby, was not forgotten at this time, was one
of the committee having charge of the big dinner, and
had a full sense of her responsibility, but thought
she could spare time to hear Henry Parsons's speech.
Thomas Dean had also been called on to contribute
his share to the day's proceedings. He had been in-
vited to sit on the platform. Litchfield wished to
make the most of all her resources, and was bent on
giving the public a sight of the brave engineer. His
wheeled chair was placed on a low truck, garlanded
in green, and borne to the scene of festivity. The
chief actor entered into the affair reluctantly, at the
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
369
same time that the people's kindness moved him
deeply. It was good to be out again among his friends
and neighbors. Maggie's quick pride was set on fire.
"I don't know why people should make a show of
him," she said to Miss Graham, in a displeased tone.
"They're not making a show of him," was the swift
reply. "Is there any reason why Litchfield shouldn't
bestow a little recognition and honor on a man like
your father, I should like to know? Every one
should be willing to contribute his share at a time
like this."
"I thought you disliked Litchfield, yet you've
done nothing but talk about this celebration for two
weeks."
"I used not to like my Aunt Deborah, who lived at
our house. She had a mint of money, yet was the
most miserly and ill-tempered soul I ever knew; but
that did not hinder me from doing as the rest did, and
giving her a little present on her birthday. And I
noticed she was better-natured for a day or two after
that. Litchfield may take a fresh start and try to get
the new reform-school here."
The weather proved propitious, and people came
flocking into the village from all sides on the morn-
ing of the appointed day. A large platform had
been erected in the centre of the grove, for the accom-
modation of the speakers and distinguished guests,
with rows of rudely built benches in front for the
multitude. Maggie meant to find an obscure place
for herself, behind some sheltering tree or shrub,
where she might see all that was going on and re-
370
A GIRL GRADUATE.
main unobserved; but the double matronage of her
mother and Miss Graham made this impossible, and
she found herself seated conspicuously, near the mid-
dle aisle, well toward the front. The Weekly Ga-
zette had announced the arrival of Henry Parsons the
day before; but Maggie would not look among the
group of people seated at the left end of the platform
to see if he was there. She could not avoid seeing
Judge Foster, however, who was chairman of the day,
and was busily moving about with that important air
which befits official greatness at such times. She saw
Rector Fay and his family ascend the platform, and
noted the eager way in which the judge stepped
forward to meet them and conduct them to their
seats, taking lengthened pains in their selection.
This little incident, together with some new effect
of shyness and timidity in Bertha, struck Maggie's
attention. The rector's expression was more than
usually complacent, she thought, but his wife wore
the pale, tired look that had become habitual.
"Have you heard the news about Judge Foster
and Bertha Fay?" her old schoolmate, Fanny Brown,
whispered to Maggie, from behind. Maggie started.
"What news?" she asked.
"Why, of their engagement!
Just think of it!
He is nearly forty years older than she is!"
Maggie made no reply, a host of disturbed emotions
keeping her silent. She looked at Bertha again, and
understood now that expression of timid self-con-
sciousness. The news she had just heard had given
her a profound shock, pierced by a queer little pang
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
371
of envy. She did not want to marry Judge Foster
herself, but just for a few passing moments it would
not have displeased her to have people know, Fanny
Brown and Rector Fay especially, that she, Maggie
Dean, daughter of the crippled engineer, might have
been sitting on the platform, the favored recipient of
the chairman's polite attentions. Maggie felt rather
small when she recognized this feeling, and tried to
fix her attention on something else.
There was another arrival which she was compelled
to notice. When Mr. Danvers came on to the plat-
form, all eyes were attracted to the figure of the tall and
graceful young woman at his side. Laura Danvers
certainly had improved, as Miss Graham said. The
old air of mingled constraint and pride had given way
to a more self-possessed bearing, still a little reserved,
but neither cold nor repelling. Her face had gath-
ered a different expression during the last two years,
suffused with a brooding thoughtfulness, the result
of some rich inner experience, which made Maggie
like to look at her. Perhaps her stylish city cos-
tume, not striking, but of perfect taste and fit, and
exactly adapted to the wearer and the occasion, had
something to do with the pleasant impression the
new-comer created.
"Have
"Isn't Laura Danvers splendid!" the irrepressible
Miss Brown again whispered from behind.
you called on her yet? I did the other day, and
what do you think!-she means to study medicine!
They say she isn't going to marry her cousin Sidney
after all."
372
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Isn't she?" Maggie asked, in an unconcerned
tone.
"What a little chatterbox that Fanny Brown is!"
Miss Graham whispered, at her side. "There couldn't
be a greater contrast to Laura Danvers. There's a
young woman that means to make something of her-
self. You ought to know each other better. I've
been talking to her about you.".
Then, I'm afraid it's quite hopeless," Maggie re-
plied, with a careless touch. Her own wish ran
in the same direction, but some instinct told her
she and Laura Danvers were not destined to come
very near each other. The next moment, there was
a shout from the crowd, as a gayly decked wagon
was driven through the grounds, with Thomas Dean
sitting inside like a conquering hero. A dozen men
rushed to assist in placing the wheeled chair, with
its heavy burden, on the platform, while the air rang
with admiring huzzas.
66
They will hurt him," said Maggie, anxiously, as
she watched the eager but clumsy efforts of the men
to accomplish their difficult task.
"If this isn't as good as a month's sickness to him,
then I miss my guess," her mother made foreboding
comment from the other side.
"Nonsense!" said Miss Graham, "it will do him
good. Now, don't let him see you two worrying,'
throwing an admonitory glance first to one, then to
the other. "You'll only do him harm that way."
Miss Graham had recently become interested in the
mind-cure, and believed that as a man thinketh so he is
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
373
"I wish they wouldn't put him there, though,"
Maggie said, "right in the sun." Miss Graham
looked and saw that the wheeled chair had been
carelessly placed just where the sun's rays fell on
the unprotected head of the occupant.
"I'll send my parasol up to him,” she said.
66
No, wait," Maggie quickly replied, putting out a
hand to detain her. A young man, sitting in the group
at the end of the platform, had also noticed this mistake,
and, rising, stepped across the intervening space. He
bent over the maimed figure in the chair, and clasped
Thomas Dean's hand in both his own while the audi-
ence, towards whom his back was turned, could not
see the tears in his eyes. Seating himself near, he
raised an umbrella and held it over his companion
until it came his turn to speak.
Maggie's heart leaped to her throat, then sank flut-
tering back. For a moment she worshipped Henry
Parsons. She had not really seen him before, though
that was not because she had not known where to
look for him; and, crouching behind the broad back
of a well-to-do farmer in front, she took furtive ob-
servation of him.
66
"Is that Henry Parsons?" Fanny Brown again
bent forward to whisper. Why! he's grown quite
handsome! I hardly knew him, with that mustache."
"Would you have known the mustache without
him?" Miss Graham asked, frowning backwards
through her spectacles.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Miss
Graham," the young woman replied, drawing her
!
374
A GIRL GRADUATE.
self up; and as Miss Graham did not know, either,
she did not try to explain.
There
It was time for the exercises to begin.
were opening remarks by the chairman, music, prayer
by one of the resident clergymen, and a poem by
Rector Fay, before Henry Parsons stepped forward
to perform his part. He paused to give place to the
round of friendly applause that greeted him; then, as
it died away, let his eyes wander slowly over his
audience. He had not greatly changed during his
absence, except that an additional manliness seemed
to express itself in his general look and bearing. His
face wore its usual grave expression, and he seemed
quite at ease; but he himself best knew if he really
felt so. Maggie began to be troubled. His prelimi-
nary pause seemed perilously long to her, and a quick
fear that he might fail darted across her. At last his
eyes met and held her own. There was no sign by
which another could have guessed his recognition of
her, no answering flush or tremble on her part to
show her acceptance of this look; but for a passing
half-moment, forgetful of the surrounding scene, their
souls met and claimed each other. It was to Maggie
a supreme moment. She knew now that she loved
Henry Parsons. That he still loved her, she had no
doubt. All her little, superficial airs and affectations
dropped from her in the first startled sacred knowl-
edge of her real feeling, so that if her old lover had
stepped down from his place and taken her by the
hand, boldly claiming and leading her away, she
would have followed him obediently.
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
375
She did not attempt to forecast any practical
means of reconciliation, or arrange the details of
their future acquaintance, only let her exalted fancy
float above all difficulties, content with her present
silent happiness. She listened dreamfully to the
address on "The Ethics of Country Life," which she
afterwards heard highly praised, but could never
rightly say she had heard. At its close, her
mother leaned across Miss Graham to speak to
her.
"I must go now," she said. "I promised to come
back in time to help about the coffee. I leave you
to look after your father."
"I will go with you," said Miss Graham, and
Maggie was left alone.
Her mother's words had broken in on a highly
wrought mood, and her thoughts floated earthwards.
There was need she should look after her father. He
looked pale and exhausted after the morning's excite-
ment, and, though she disliked going near the platform,
she pushed her way through the crowd and placed
herself at his side. Thomas Dean's friends, otherwise
engaged for the moment, seemed to have forgotten
their charge; and Maggie stood helplessly by, the
anxiety and embarrassment of her position increasing
every moment. At the end of the platform stood
Judge Foster and the Fays, Laura Danvers and her
father, with a few others, grouped about the orator of
the day, congratulating him, and exchanging friendly
remarks with each other.
"Wait here a minute, Parsons," she heard Mr. Dan-
376
A GIRL GRADUATE.
vers say, as he separated himself from the rest and
ran down the platform steps. "You are to go with
us to dinner." Maggie felt that her situation was
becoming intolerable. Mrs. Fay, turning, saw her,
and stepped quickly across to her, giving her hand,
with a word of pleasant greeting, first to the father,
then to the daughter.
“You are tired, Mr.
attentive look on him.
once."
Dean," she said, bending an
"We must get you home at
She stepped towards some men standing near, and
spoke to them, who came quickly to his assistance,
and Thomas Dean was borne awkwardly but safely
back to the green-wreathed truck waiting to convey
him home. Henry Parsons, talking with Laura Dan-
vers, noted the little commotion, and, abruptly excus-
ing himself, ran down the steps to bid his old friend
good-by. Maggie's heart beat with new elation.
She had been in doubt whether to follow her father
or not, but was no longer so. She turned to descend
from the platform at the other end, meaning to lose
herself in the crowd and escape home before he came,
but was arrested by a well-remembered voice speak-
ing her name. Looking back, she saw Bertha Fay
coming towards her with outstretched hand and
smiling face. Bertha had been longing to see and
speak to Maggie for several days, all remembrances
of their past trouble being obliterated by a new
imperative need of her. Encouraged by her mother's
action, she had taken this bold step towards a recon-
ciliation.
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
377
Maggie! Oh, Maggie!" was all she could say,
as she came close to her and extended her hand.
Surprised and perplexed, Maggie could only stand
in her place while she mechanically extended her
hand, and let it remain in her friend's.
"Bertha wants to come to see you, I think," Mrs.
Fay said, coming to their relief, her sympathetic tone
showing approval of her daughter's action.
"She-
she has something to tell you."
"Yes, Maggie, do say I may come. Papa is quite
willing and"— She stopped, aware that she had
blundered.
66
""
Why, certainly," Maggie replied, with some re-
straint. "I shall be very happy Then, catching
the look of mortification and pain in Bertha's face,
her old love rushed over her like a wave, sweeping
the last remnant of wounded pride away. "Yes, do
come," she said, clasping the hand she still held, with
a quick, affectionate pressure. She then became
aware of Judge Foster standing near, looking down at
the scene with a pleased but embarrassed countenance.
In one of those generous impulses which made Mag-
gie's manner as charming at times as it was nat-
ural, she turned towards him, greeting him in the
same cordial and unrestrained way he remembered of
old. The judge was delighted and immensely re-
lieved. He could almost have sworn no subject of
near personal interest had ever been broached between
them, or, if there had, she had forgotten all about it.
Turning, Maggie saw Laura Danvers looking at
them, and the two exchanged a rather formal bow.
378
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Each wished it had been something more, but neither
knew how to make it so. The next moment, Maggie
heard her father calling her. She must go to him,
notwithstanding the proximity of Henry Parsons.
Every other figure seemed to lose distinctness as she
made her way towards these two. What did her
father want of her? she wondered. Ostensibly it
was only to tell her she had better stay on the
grounds with her friends; that two or three neigh-
bors, who were to accompany him, would see him
safely bestowed at home, and that he could get along
very well alone for a few hours. But Maggie would
not listen to this, and said she should go home at
once.
"Wait a minute," said her father, as she turned
away. "Ye ain't seen Henry Parsons yet. Here's
Henry," turning to indicate the young man at his
side. Maggie looked in his direction and met a dark,
entreating gaze fixed on her. The driver was im-
patiently snapping his whip, and a small crowd stood
near, waiting the departure. There was nothing to do
but extend her hand, which she withdrew immedi-
ately.
"I've ben tellin' Henry he must come and see us.
He ain't goin' to stay very long-only 'bout a
fortn'ï't, he says." She had been compelled to drop
her eyes, but now lifted them again, to meet that
deep, questioning look.
“Mother will be glad to see you," she said, in a
low voice, and again turned away. The driver
cracked his whip, and a chorus of voices shouted a
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
379
•
joyous farewell. Then Maggie heard Mr. Danvers
speak again.
"Come this way, Parsons; we are waiting."
Walking slowly towards home, her fancy easily con-
strued the picture of Henry Parsons accompanying
Laura Danvers and her father to the festive board,
where seats of honor awaited them at the upper end,
among other select guests of the occasion; while she
went on her way forgotten and alone. The exultant
feelings of an hour before had quite died out. It
seemed now the merest accident that a certain pair
of eyes had met her own. Her cheeks burned at the
presumption of which she had been guilty in daring
to discover a special meaning in their long look,
which vain fancy had construed into a direct message
to herself.
The brief exultant mood which held her a few
moments before, had given way to a host of torment-
ing doubts and fears that pricked her like so many
needles. It was plain that Miss Graham had spoken
the simple truth when she said Laura Danvers had
improved; and if she had taken to being intellectual,
and that sort of thing, and Henry Parsons were so
useful to her father, nothing could be more natural.
Maggie was not jealous, she told herself consolingly.
It was no such poor feeling as that made her sensible
of the difference between Laura Danvers's lot and
hers. She was not only magnanimously bent on not
blaming her old schoolmate for profiting by advan-
tages out of her own reach, but heroically granted
every virtue to her, generously affirming that she
380
A GIRL GRADUATE.
deserved every good thing likely to befall her. A
young man of Henry Parsons's type would naturally
appreciate, to the full, those earnest and serious traits
which made up a character like Laura Danvers's.
And yet, those letters to Helen; and he certainly
had looked at her as if
What proportion of mixed reflections like these
were rooted in real conviction, or formed the cause
for mere surface irritation on a temperament modified
anew by every little passing circumstance, Maggie
herself did not stop to inquire, and it is needless for
any one else to attempt to settle.
She reached home tired and depressed, to find her
father worn out with the day's exertions, and needing
her care. She set about getting dinner for him, and
afterwards adjusted him in the large chair for his
afternoon rest.
66
Henry's a pretty good talker," he said, looking
up at her as she replaced the pillow under his head.
She made a low-voiced assent, still busying herself
with the pillow.
"And he ain't changed a bit 's I kin see. Jest the
same straightforrard, sensible chap he always was.
He's gettin' along first-rate, too, I should think. Mr.
Danvers 'n' some o' the rest of 'em seem to set a good
deal o' store by him. They're goin' to form a buildin'
association and make him secretary, so your mother
was sayin'."
Maggie had lowered the chair, so it was not easy
for him to continue talking, as she suspected he
would have liked to do; but it was not easy to
LITCHFIELD'S CELEBRATION.
381
listen, and she drew down the window-shade, and
went softly from the room, leaving its tired occu-
pant in desired quiet and darkness, while she went
up to her chamber to think over again the events of
the day.
CHAPTER XXI.
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
WHEN Laura Danvers left home for a year's in-
struction in the higher branches, it was with a young
girl's vague notion of what it was she really wanted.
The year's course was extended to two, at the end of
which she accepted an invitation from her room-mate,
Mary Slade, to spend the summer at her home in one
of the manufacturing towns of Connecticut. She had
paid a short visit there before, during one of the holi-
day vacations.
Somerville College was noted among institutions of
its kind for thoroughness of method and an enlight-
ened aim. Laura had intended at first to study only
music and the modern languages, but she had not
been an inmate of the college long before new ambi-
tions were kindled. Here, where she was thrown in
contact with choice young intellects of various climes,
her own began to quicken, and her mind lost its pro-
vincial narrowness and stiffness. She felt herself
more congenially placed among these picked daugh-
ters of wealthy and cultured families than in the
little town where she was born. This mental con-
tentment soon began to show in an improved manner,
which, though it would never have the spontaneous
grace and freshness of Maggie Dean's, came to ac-
382
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
383
quire a quiet graciousness of its own, that warmed
and softened her whole character. Laura Danvers
never became a popular favorite, but she gained
steadily in the regard of both teachers and pupils,
and this period was marked by the beginning of two
or three friendships that lasted through life.
Her most intimate friend and companion was her
room-mate, Mary Slade. It had been a sharp disap-
pointment to Laura to learn, when she entered college,
that she must share her room with a stranger. It is
impossible to measure the different result which
might have ensued had each of these young women,
both new arrivals, and coming from widely separated
points, been allowed to cherish her loneliness in a
room by herself. The two were somewhat alike in
a natural reserve, and a certain elevation of purpose.
In Laura, this purpose took the form of an extreme
conscientiousness, fostered by pious instruction, and
showing itself in a minute and punctilious attention to
little duties. In Mary Slade, brought up in an atmos-
phere of greater mental activity than her room-mate,
it took wider range, and manifested itself in a love
and knowledge of ideas. She was the daughter of a
wealthy New England manufacturer, and the inher-
itor of a strict Puritan integrity combined with
a keen intellectual relish for the living problems
of the day. Laura had hitherto associated all ques-
tions of social reform with women of Miss Graham's
type, and until now she did not know that such
subjects as universal suffrage and labor-unions were
seriously discussed anywhere outside the ranks of
384
A GIRL GRADUATE.
I
their extremest advocates. A family like that of
the prosperous mill-owner's was a revelation to her.
The Slades used none of their wealth for display and
selfish indulgence, but devoted all their time and
service to the care of their employés. Mr. Slade
divided his profits with his workmen, and kept a
general oversight of them. He was assisted by his
wife, a woman of sound character and intelligence,
and continually spurred on to some new experiment
in drainage or ventilation by his two children.
The oldest was a son, who had finished his studies
at Yale two years before Laura met him. Bertram
Slade was of the same intellectual and moral fibre as
his sister, but of a more sensitive type, with abstracted
manners that bespoke mental pre-occupation, lacking
somewhat in practical wisdom, and pronounced by
some of his friends a dreamer.
"Bert is too romantic," his sister once said to
Laura. "He tries to make a story or a picture out
of every person he meets; he lets his imagination
work on these people too much. He persuaded my
father to open an art class for the children of the
factory hands, and got a trained teacher from Boston
to instruct them. His theory was that, by develop-
ing the sentiment of beauty, you destroy the impulse
to evil. He thought those Irish boys would stop
robbing my father's orchard if they understood free-
hand drawing."
"And didn't they?" Laura asked, casting a sym-
pathetic glance towards a certain photograph on the
mantel.
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
385
"Not right away; but it might have been worse.
The teacher was young and distractingly pretty, and
Bert did not fall in love with her."
"Is he so susceptible as that?" the other asked,
trying to speak carelessly.
"I don't know as you can call it susceptible; he is
morbidly sensitive, and too much of a theorist. That
is why he gets so easily discouraged. Little things
affect him almost as much as they do a woman.
Bert ought to have been a poet. You are prepared
to excuse a good many things in a poet."
"You mean they have different moral standards
from ours," Laura said, with an anxious note, and a
prejudiced recollection of Shelley and of the author
of the "Bride of Abydos."
"Oh, Bert's morals are all right. My mother says
his success and happiness all depend on the kind of
woman he marries. If he marries a sensible girl, in-
terested in the same things he is, she will help him;
but if he marries a simpleton, it's all over with poor
Bert."
"I should not suppose that was likely, in a family
like yours."
""
“You never can tell. Bert is the most modest
man in the world, and has the most exalted ideas
about women. He sees a new Madonna in every one
he meets, except in his sister."
This was one of several conversations which enabled
Laura to form a mental picture of her friend's family
before she saw any of them. She could have picked
out her room-mate's parents from a crowd, -Mrs.
386
A GIRL GRADUATE.
Slade with her tall, well formed figure, composed
manner and intelligent accent; and her husband,
large and paternal, with an experienced and busi-
ness-like air. Laura felt she had very little to relate
in return for the knowledge thus gained of this busy
household, and shrank from the questions naturally
proffered respecting her home-life.
"My father is a dealer in leather," she explained
to her friend. "He does not employ many hands.
If he did, I am sure he would want to do what is
right for them. There are no very poor people in
Litchfield," she added, apologetically. "We do not
have to build hospitals we can take care of them
ourselves. My mother does a good deal of such
work. She is President of the Aid Society in our
church." She felt the meagreness of this account,
but could do no better.
At the end of her first visit to his home, Laura felt
well acquainted with Bertram Slade; though, when
she examined this feeling, she found it based on no
very definite or intimate knowledge she had gained
on the subject, but on a general atmosphere of kind-
ness, and the remembrance of a pair of dark, earnest
eyes which seemed to follow her about.
Some new sentiment, very warm and sweet, lay
like a young nestling in her heart, and a look of
dreamy reminiscence hung over her for days. The
acquaintance was renewed a few months after, on a
flying trip of the young man's to Iowa to look after
some business claims of his father's, when he stopped
over for a day's visit to the college. Laura did not
可
​.
-
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
387
have a moment's discourse with him alone, nor did
he seem to seek it; yet the remembrance of certain
looks and tones remained to accentuate the former
feeling.
An inevitable shyness might have prevented her
from accepting her friend's second invitation, had she
not known the brother was to be absent from home
most of the summer. A week before her visit ended,
he returned. Soon after she detected some subtile
but fixed change, which could not but re-act on her-
self, so that she knew she appeared equally changed
to him. In some unknown way she had offended, or,
worse, disappointed him. She had always known she
was not the equal of these new friends.
Mary Slade noticed the change also, but dared not
rush to the rescue, as her direct, courageous nature
impelled her. Her own desire to effect a certain re-
sult might have blinded her to the real wish of those
most concerned, and she feared to blunder. It was
easier to speak to Laura than to her brother, for the
nearness that belongs to girls' acquaintance; but she
could only do it in far-off, tentative fashion.
"Bert is so ridiculously sensitive," she said, one
night, when approach to the subject was made easier
by the shadowed moonlight which filled the chamber
where they were undressing. "The idea of his flying
out at me like that when I spoke of the uselessness of
a classical education for most young men," referring
tc a discussion just closed downstairs.
“Of course, I
didn't mean him, though it's true that my father, who
doesn't know a line of Greek, is a more successful
388
A GIRL GRADUATE.
business man than Bert will ever be. But Bert
doesn't want to be a business man, so I don't see
who is hurt. I shall have to apologize again. It
seems as if I had done nothing all my life but apolo-
gize to Bert. It was the same when we were chil-
dren if we quarrelled, I had always to go more than
half-way to make up-not because he was ill-natured
but because he is so sensitive."
If her listener caught any hint in this piece of
sisterly frankness, she never acted on it.
There are young women who, in similar cases, can
go more than half-way, but Laura Danvers was not
one of them.
She did not try to define this experience or its
effect on herself. It was too indefinite and dream-
like for that. A golden hint and promise had been
given her that was all; but all her life she would
go
"the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream's sake."
When she returned home, she felt she had left her
girlhood behind her; but a life of useful womanhood
stretched before her. She could not settle back into
the characterless existence led by some of her old
schoolmates. She might never see Bertram Slade
again, but the inspiration of her acquaintance with
such a man would remain.
She found her father unchanged; but her mother
had failed in health, and clung to the strong, self-
reliant daughter who had returned to her, as if their
relations had been reversed. Laura might study
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
389
medicine or do anything she liked, if only she would
not leave home again, a difficult condition, but
Laura willingly submitted to it for a time. Mrs.
Danvers did not even press the point of a marriage
with her cousin, being less disappointed in the result
of things here than she had expected, and caring for
nothing so much, just now, as to keep her daughter
near her, and be taken care of by her.
The two cousins were able to reach an understand-
ing with each other without serious heart-damage on
either side. Sidney began one of his abortive attempts
at love-making, one day, when they sat alone together
in the stiff, but richly appointed parlor. His cousin
quietly checked him.
"Don't talk like that to me any more, Sidney," she
said, gently.
66
Why not?" he asked, with boyish wilfulness,
that sat very well on him.
"Because—well, because I don't want to listen.
It's very nice in you to want to say pleasant things
to me," she added, soothingly, as a mortified flush
colored his cheek, "but it isn't necessary. Our good
opinion of each other can be taken for granted," she
ended, smilingly.
Sidney perceived he was to be let down easily, but
felt a little piqued.
"A fellow is under a big disadvantage with a
woman when she is his cousin," he complained. "Of
course, she can't think much of him, because she's so
used to him."
66
No," was the gently serious reply, "that is not
390
A GIRL GRADUATE.
it. We don't think less of things because we are
used to them we should be very small and un-
grateful to do that, I think; but sometimes we catch
glimpses of other things." She stopped, and colored
a little.
"We like our friends for different reasons:
some because we know them so well, others because
we know them so little."
Sidney was inclined to be amused at this, and she
smiled also. "I mean because they are so new and
different," she added. "I remember once when I was
at the seashore with my mother-I was a little girl
then I used to amuse myself picking up pebbles.
I gathered a very pretty little collection, just common
little pebbles, which I kept in a glass jar. One day, I
found something quite different,—a lovely blue stone,
which pleased me more than anything I had seen; but
I lost it almost immediately. I remember how long I
searched for it, and how I cried because it was lost,
but I never found it." She spoke in a low, dreamful
tone, with her eyes fastened, in far-off reverie, on the
swaying muslin curtain near which she sat. She
seemed to be talking to herself more than to him.
Her cousin stared at her in undisguised surprise.
His look drew hers, and she colored guiltily.
“I mean I never thought less of my little jar of
pebbles," she said, confusedly.
"No, I suppose not." He considerately turned
his eyes away. It was incredible that such a girl
as Laura could tell him a story like this. What did
she mean by it? What a handsome girl she had
grown to be! With a little encouragement, Sidney
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
391
felt he could be genuinely in love with her. He rose
from his chair, and, thrusting his hands in his coat-
pockets, took one or two turns about the room.
“I am one of the common little pebbles," he said,
coming back and standing directly in front of her.
“No, dear,” she made quick reply, looking up at
him with beautiful candor. "You are my cousin
Sidney, whom I shall always think a great deal of,
provided I do not have to think any more of him."
She gave him an arch, kindly smile. "We shall
always be the best of friends, but we must never-
marry."
66
Why must we not?" in half-peevish tone.
"Because there is not the right feeling between us.
When people marry, it should be because they need
each other, and because giving each other up would
be like, like dividing one's life in twain," drawing
in her breath,-"all our best thoughts, our dearest
hopes and motives. Only half the old self would
remain." Again she seemed to be speaking to her-
self, and her cousin looked down on her with in-
creased wonder. The shyest natures are often, under
pressure of long-repressed feeling, the boldest.
"You and I like each other, as cousins, very much,"
she continued, coming back to the personal aspect of
the question, "but that would not prevent us from
often wearying and disappointing each other in any
nearer relation. There are many ways in which we
should fail to suit each other. I don't want to hurt
you, cousin,” bending towards him, "but I shouldn't
want a husband who was always joking and expecting
392
A GIRL GRADUATE.
me to laugh. Not that I mind your jokes now: I
think some of them are very good.'
""
"For that matter, you needn't laugh. Wives don't
always do what their husbands expect; and, after
marriage, I might lose the habit of joking."
She rewarded this with a little laugh, then pro-
ceeded seriously as before.
“No, we should not suit each other," she repeated.
“We should always be trying to please or entertain
each other. I should often feel lonely; you would
get tired and seek other company, and I-I should
not care if you did. There is never any feeling of
loneliness or difference in a true marriage. One
would feel as much alone as safe and free, I mean
-as when really alone-more indeed. It is like
Providence."
Her listener was so increasingly surprised by all
this, so full of admiration for the combined modesty
and courage of the speaker, her daring unconscious-
ness, that he forgot his own disappointment, if he had
any.
“I see,” he said, falling back on his old manner, to
relieve the portentous gravity of the scene, "in mar-
ried life the number two not only stands for better
company than three, but for a completer solitude than
Is that it?"
one.
"Something like that-yes," with lowered voice
and eyelid.
"It's pretty deep. You took an extra course in
metaphysics when you were at school, didn't you?”
"Don't laugh at me, Sidney."
·
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
393
!
"Laugh at you! I should think not. By George!
I begin to think you're the finest girl in the world,
Laura! It's always that way," he went on, lugubri-
ously. “When a girl refuses a man, she does it in
such an exalted kind of way that a fellow goes off
thinking ten times more of her than before."
"I haven't refused you, dear. Don't be troubled
about that. I haven't refused you," smiling, and
rising from her seat, "because you have never really
asked me.
"Haven't I?" he asked, brightening a little.
"No; but some day I hope you will ask some one
and be very much in earnest about it, and I hope —
forgive me, cousin," laying her hand on his arm,
"that she will not say 'yes' too easily.'
""
"You think, with difficulty, she can be made to
say it, though?" he put in, with apparent deep
anxiety.
"Not that I want her to tease or play with you,"
smiling at his fun, but not replying to it, "only to
test you. And I hope, too, she will be a little your
superior, so that you will be a little afraid of her; not
want to disappoint her, I mean, because, you know,
you will be so fond of her."
Her cousin looked at her, one emotion after another
running wave-like over his mobile countenance: sur-
prise, amusement, and grateful, admiring affection.
"I don't know what I've ever done to you, Laura,
that you should be heaping so many virtuous wishes
on me," he said, with affected dismay. "I feel as if I
was about to offer myself to Miss Graham. She'd
394
A GIRL GRADUATE.
bring me out.
Are you going?" he asked, as she
made some suitable reply, and turned to leave the
room. She excused herself by saying she had an
errand down-town.
"Well, good-by, then," coming towards her and
extending his hand. “It is a kind of 'good-by,' you
know." She placed her hand frankly in his, which
closed over it with a warm pressure. He hesitated
a moment; then, with characteristic audacity, bent
down and kissed her. She flushed and quickly with-
drew her hand, looking a little displeased.
"I beg your pardon," he said, flushing a little, him-
self. "I didn't mean to. At least, I thought it
would be all right now that we are nothing but
cousins. Do forgive me," he ended, speaking se-
riously, and with an irresistible accent. She smiled
a little, bade him good-by, and left him.
Alone, he threw himself in a large chair and began
twirling his mustache, meditatively. A few moments
after, Mrs. Danvers entered the room, with her slow
and feeble step.
"Where is Laura?" she asked, looking about the
room.
66
Picking up pebbles on the sea-beat shore," was
the reply, spoken with perfect gravity. She looked at
him with a puzzled face. He rose and went towards
her. "It's all over, aunt," he said, in a tone of
mixed melancholy and cheer. "Laura won't have
me. She likes me very well as a cousin, but as a
husband she thinks I would be too amusing."
"Dear Sidney," said his aunt, laying her hand on
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
395
his shoulder, and looking at him sympathetically,
"you mustn't take it too hard. Laura is very fond
of you-she always was," letting her stout figure
sink slowly down into a chair. "I am sure there is
no one else."
"Think not?" he asked, eying her brightly a
moment. "But I don't know that that makes it any
better for me. On the whole, I think I would rather
a girl refused me because of some one else, than on
the ground of general undesirability.”
"I am sure Laura hasn't anything against you,
Sidney. She's changed in so many ways since she
went to college! I am not complaining of her.
Every one says she has greatly improved. You
think she has improved, don't you?" looking up at
her nephew.
"I think she is a trump," was the prompt reply.
"We ought all to be proud of her."
"Yes, of course. It seems so good to have her
home again, but she has changed. I suppose it is
Mary Slade's influence. It was she who put it into
Laura's head to study medicine.”
"Angels and ministers of grace!" exclaimed Sid-
ney, under his breath. "Is Laura going to study
medicine?" he asked aloud.
"So she says. Don't you approve of young women
studying medicine?" she asked, solicitously.
"I guess it won't hurt the young women. I ap-
prove of my cousin doing whatever she wants to,"
he added, more seriously. "A doctor's diploma can't
hurt a girl like Laura."
396
A GIRL GRADUATE.
“That's what I told her father. Of course, we
never dreamed of such a thing. Perhaps it would
have been better if we had sent her to a different kind
of school; but at Somerville all the girls expect to do
something, she says. But Laura hasn't taken up with
any free-thinking notions. People like that often do,
you know. She says she is just as good a Presbyte-
rian as she ever was. Mary Slade is a Congregation-
alist."
Sidney smiled sympathetically.
young woman.
"Mary Slade
was her room-mate?" he asked, with idle interest.
“Yes — here is her photograph," taking an album
from the table. "She seems to be quite a superior
Mr. Slade is very wealthy, Laura
says, and his daughter can do anything she likes, —
go to Europe or anywhere, but she does not want
to. She has accepted the position of district visitor in
Boston, in order to learn the best methods of charity
work."
"She looks like that kind," Sidney observed, ex-
amining the face before him. It was not a striking
one, but clean-cut and intelligent, with wide brow
and large, clear eyes.
"Who is this melancholy chap beside her?"
"That is her brother."
"Ah, Mary Slade has a brother!" in a sudden
accession of interest, bending to examine the photo-
graph more closely. "Laura knows him, too, I sup-
pose," in a careless tone, but attentive for the answer.
"Not very well, I think. She seldom mentions
him."
BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
397
Sidney set himself to consider whether or not this
was the best proof of non-acquaintance.
"He's a very superior young man, I believe. He
has written for the magazines."
66
They seem to be a very superior set," he made dry
response, closing the album, and replacing it on the
table. "Well, I must go." His aunt followed him
to the door.
"I'm sorry, dear," she said, as they paused at the
threshold, her maternal heart prompting some word
of parting comfort. "Her father and I would have
liked it very much; but, of course, we couldn't urge
her. You mustn't let it make any difference in your
coming here."
He had never thought of such a thing. Indeed, it
would be easier to visit at his uncle's now than it had
sometimes been before. He should have all a son's
privileges, with none of a prospective husband's respon-
sibilities; and, now that he was not going to marry
his cousin, he felt he should want to see her oftener.
But he could not disappoint his aunt by showing how
little disappointed he was himself. He tried to look
pensive, pressed her hand gratefully, and left her.
"If he is the little blue pebble," he said to himself,
as he went down the street, and his mind went back
to the photograph, "what an infernal cad he must be,
not to appreciate a girl like Laura!" The metaphor
was a little mixed, but the meaning was intelligible.
:
CHAPTER XXII.
AT THE WORKS.
WHEN he reached the main street of the village,
Gale noticed signs of some unusual excitement.
Men, gathered in groups at the corners and in front
of the stores, were engaged in earnest discussion,
wearing anxious faces, and looking apprehensive of
some near trouble.
There had been a feeling of uneasiness in the vil-
lage for several days, caused by a disturbed state of
affairs and threatened outbreak at the Locomotive
Works. Things had not been running very smoothly
there since the coming of the new superintendent,
who had brought his own foreman with him from the
city, with a few picked men, on whom he had at once
bestowed the places of chief honor and profit. The
superintendent himself was a man too young for the
place, which he had secured through the influence
of one of the directors of the road, without reference
to his poor qualifications. The last he might have
corrected, and escaped blame for his youthful inexpe-
rience had he possessed less youthful arrogance; but
he was at that dangerous point when the gift of power
swells the sense of self-importance. He had no
sooner entered on his new duties than he began, in
masterful fashion, to introduce new rules and meth-
398
AT THE WORKS.
399
ods, all tending to lessen the freedom and self-respect
which the men had felt under his predecessor.
Thomas Dean was not a man of culture or large
experience; but he had certain qualities of broad,
native manhood, which made him a born leader on
his own plane. His government at the Works-
there had been no superintendent in his day- had
been a little lax, perhaps, compared to the rigid dis-
cipline that pertains in the city factory; but it had,
at least, been fruitful of harmony and faithful service.
The old foreman had been the friend and neighbor of
many of the men under his supervision. The forbear-
ance and sense of responsibility which guided his
treatment of the most troublesome one among them,
Pete Harmon, marked his relations with all.
Some
of the men and their families were in the habit of
visiting at his house, the men sitting on the porch,
on a summer evening, to enjoy a fraternal pipe, while
the women gossiped indoors. The new foreman,
copying the example of his superior, would have
nothing to do with ways like these, holding himself
socially aloof from the men in the shops, and seldom
speaking to them except to give an order, or repri-
mand a mistake. The men felt the difference, and
submitted to it with surly and defiant looks. They
fell into the habit of gathering at the alehouse at
night better patronized during this period of dis-
content than it had been before-to discuss their
grievances and magnify them in the repeated
telling.
All this was what the superintendent had expected,
400
A GIRL GRADUATE.
and felt not the least disturbed at. He believed sus-
picion on both sides, combined with the wish to cir-
cumvent, to be the natural relation of employer and
workman. He would have deemed himself a fool to
try to win the confidence of those dependent on
him, who, for that reason, have cause to be equally
thankful for a kick or a curse. This spirit was not
altogether the outgrowth of a coarse or malevolent
disposition, but was rather the result of intellectual
deficiency and a brazen self-assumption.
Aside from this atmosphere of personal coldness
and mistrust in which the men worked, they were
treated as well as they had been. They were paid
promptly, and worked a reasonable number of hours.
The rebellious spirit manifest in strikes and other
public disturbances among their brethren in the large
cities had never entered the quiet precincts of Litch-
field. There were one or two trades-unions in town;
but they led a sleepy existence, with hardly sufficient
cause of interest to compensate for the yearly dues.
Now, as the murmur of discontent grew louder, the
people began to see that they had the elements of
public disorder in their midst.
It was the superintendent's misfortune, rather than
his fault, that, shortly after acceptance of his office,
the company had ordered a reduction in wages. It
was only a trifle; but the order, coming as it did
through the hated manager, had all the effect on the
men of the most tyrannous misuse of power. Under
pressure of this new grievance, they threw political
economy to the dogs, and cared nothing for the ac-
AT THE WORKS.
401
companying facts of an over-stocked market and a
slackening demand for work.
Thomas Dean had been through such periods as
this, but had been able to procure a wise and sympa-
thetic adjustment of affairs, that preserved the confi-
dence of the men, and kept them steadily balanced
against misfortune until better times came.
It was
even said that at one time of unusual need and diffi-
culty he had voluntarily given up a portion of his
weekly wage in order to appease the universal mis-
fortune by sharing it. No one looked to see Superin-
tendent Lewis resorting to measures of this kind.
This underground murmur of discontent might
have expended itself harmlessly but for a final cir-
cumstance which threatened to serve as a noisy and
dangerous outlet.
The men would have submitted, perhaps, to the
hardship of smaller wages for themselves, but when
the rumor reached them that the superintendent's
salary had been raised one-third, their smouldering
wrath broke into flame.
Another man, more cautious, if not more humane,
would have prudently declined this mark of favor;
but Myron Lewis was never counselled by anything
except his own vanity and selfish desires. Nor was
he disturbed by the knowledge that this advancement
had been secured on no ground of official merit and
fitness, but solely as the prospective son-in-law of the
director who had secured him the place, and who
thus enabled his future relative to bear his share of
coming wedding expenses.
402
A GIRL GRADUATE.
The men had no sooner ascertained the truth than
they took definite steps to express their resentment.
They gathered at the alehouse in larger numbers
than before, drinking the success of their cause in
deeper potations of poor beer, and addressing a writ-
ten protest to the young manager. This was pre-
sented by a committee of elderly men, old and trusted
hands at the Works. The superintendent burned it
before their eyes. That would teach these pestiferous
fools a lesson, he thought, and it did. The men quit
their places and walked out of the Works in a body,
on hearing which, the town authorities promptly or
dered the close of the saloons.
This was Wednesday. An air of portentous still-
ness hung over the town for three days. The clouds.
of black smoke issuing from the huge chimneys of
the Locomotive Works had disappeared, and the
whistle had ceased to mark the working-day's divis-
ions. Saturday night was approaching, the time
when the men presented themselves outside the win-
dow of the superintendent's office to receive their
pay. It was rumored they meant to do the same to-
night. When the superintendent learned this, he
gave it to be understood, with a bragging air, that in
such case the men would receive pay for three days'
work, no more. The men thought differently. Most
of the citizens seemed to think differently also. Pub-
lic sympathy had never been very active on the side.
of the well-dressed superintendent, and now began
to lean decidedly the other way. Rector Fay had
preached a sermon, the substance of which was that
AT THE WORKS.
403
servants should obey their masters, but nobody ap-
peared to heed it. Mr. Danvers and one or two
other business leaders, who had men in their own em-
ploy, held a midway position, offering much wise
counsel to both sides, but committing themselves to
neither. Miss Graham had started out at once to
raise a subscription for the workmen's families. She
did not hesitate to let it be known on which side her
sympathies lay.
"As long as you behave yourselves and let the
saloons alone, I'll stand by you," she said to the
leaders of the uprising.
The friends of the superintendent, among whom
was Sidney Gale, felt the obligations of this relation
something of a burden just at present, and suspected
he did not feel as brave as he talked. Gale had
known Lewis in a business college both had attended
a few years before, and had taken him in charge on
his entrance into Litchfield society. He felt the
more anxious for his friend, perhaps, that he was not
altogether proud of him, and towards nightfall turned
his steps in the direction of the Works.
The hour for the men to receive their pay was
seven, but the unusual nature of the present visit
delayed preparations until much later. When Gale
entered his friend's office, he found him looking pale
and nervous. The remnants of a cold supper, brought
from his boarding-house, were on the table, and sev-
eral pieces of folded paper were scattered over the
floor.
“There's another," said the young man, as a small,
404.
A GIRL GRADUATE.
i
folded missive was flung through the window, and
fell on the table near his visitor. Gale unfolded and
read it.
"Shades of Brutus! The Ides of March wasn't
a circumstance compared to this. Look!" handing
the paper to his companion.
"Don't show it to me," was the pettish reply.
“I've read enough of them already." Sidney glanced
at the scattered papers on the floor.
"Well," thrusting his hands into his pockets, and
turning to observe his friend, "what are you going
to do?"
"Just what I said I should. Three days' work
means three days' pay, and that is all it does mean."
The words had a confident sound, but the speaker's
manner failed to support it. He tried to assume a
courageous attitude, but failed miserably, and his
voice betrayed a little tremor. His lips were white,
and his hands trembled. Sidney looked at him with
mixed pity and curiosity.
"Those fellows will find me prepared for them," he
said, with the same weak boastfulness, taking a pistol
from his pocket and laying it on the table.
His friend looked at it as he might at some curious
insect from a foreign clime.
"Loaded?" he asked, in a careless tone.
“Of course it's loaded," the other angrily replied.
"Well, there isn't much use in having one unless
it is loaded, but I guess we'll put this one in here."
He opened a drawer, and, placing the pistol inside,
locked it and put the key in his pocket.
AT THE WORKS.
405
"
"What do you mean?" the owner demanded, im-
potently. "Do you want me to be murdered in cold
blood?"
"I don't want you to be murdered at all. I don't
think you'd do the part of Cæsar very well, anyway,
even if we had Pompey's pillar. You don't seem
quite yourself, my friend," seating himself on the
corner of the table, and regarding him leisurely.
"I'm afraid you can't take any very prominent rôle
in this play. I'll tell you," slapping his knee, “ we'll
give you the little lute-player's part. It's generally
taken by a girl. Brutus covers you up with his
cloak. You'll like that, I fancy."
"I wish you would stop your infernal chaff, and
tell me what to do." Gale's sarcasm, which would
have stung deeply enough at another time, now fell
harmless on a consciousness possessed by the single
growing sense of fear.
I'll
"Now, you're talking," said Sidney. "Get out
your money and books and give them to me.
pay the men. You keep out of sight somewhere.”
The other hesitated, — longing, but ashamed to act
on this advice.
"Come, hurry up; they'll be here in a minute.”
Outside was a distant murmur, and the sound of
approaching footsteps. Sidney turned down the gas,
and the two young men peered cautiously through
the closed shutters. The workmen were coming in a
solid column, supported by many rough and idle
lookers-on. Some of them carried torches. The su-
perintendent grew whiter than before, and drops of
406
A GIRL GRADUATE.
cold sweat stood on his face. Sidney also looked a
little sober.
"Where's the money?" he demanded, wheeling
sharply about, and making preparations to carry out
his design.
His companion took a roll of bills from his pocket
and gave it to him, with a shaking hand.
"Is this the full week's pay?" Gale asked.
The other stammered something in reply.
"Don't be a fool, Lewis. Give me the rest of the
money."
"Do you think I had better pay them full wages?"
he asked, irresolutely. “I've sworn I wouldn't.
You give these fellows the upper hand, and they'll
never let go."
"Neither would you and I. You should do your
swearing later in the day." He took a second roll of
money the superintendent handed him, seated himself
on a high stool before a table near the window, and
was ready for action.
66
Now, get behind that screen," he said to his com-
panion. "I'm going to open the shop."
The latter looked at him in confused shame and
fright.
"Of course, they won't hurt you," he said, excus-
ingly. They have no motive.”
66
"Except that I'm your friend. Come, vanish."
The next moment the shutters were flung back.
Impatient of the remaining barrier of the window,
with its little aperture for the passage of the money,
Sidney boldly pushed it upwards.
AT THE WORKS.
407
"For God's sake, don't do that," the superintend-
ent whispered, from behind the screen.
"Shut up. We're not going to have any rat-behind-
the-arras business in this play." To the crowd out-
side, Gale was disclosed in full view.
"Good-evening, honest citizens," he called out in a
cheerful tone. "Come to get your pay? Just walk
up and settle. Don't be bashful."
His listeners were taken aback, and for a moment no
one replied, the men gathering in knots to discuss this
new development.
"That's Sidney Gale!" the owner of the name
heard some one say. "He's got enough gas to light
the whole county."
"Come on now, men," he called out once more,
but none of them moved.
"Where's the superintendent?" some one called,
from the back part of the crowd.
"Sick with a cold," was the prompt reply.
This was received with a derisive laugh. "He'd
better be," said one. "He's a damned coward," said
another.
"All right. Have it your own way," Sidney
answered. "Under some circumstances I might
think it my duty to dispute you, but not to-night.
There's too many of you."
There was another laugh at this, but it contained a
friendlier note. Behind the screen, the victim of this
kind of talk writhed and groaned.
There seemed nothing to do but go forward.
The sight of the money was tempting, and they
408
A GIRL GRADUATE.
were anxious to know how much they were to
receive.
The first man to present himself at the window
watched Sidney sharply, as the latter, counting a few
bills, handed them to him, and then checked off his
name in the large ledger. He counted them through
also, started with surprise, looked pleased, and also a
little ashamed, then darted a furtive look at Sidney,
as if suspecting him of a mistake.
"It's all right, isn't it?" the paymaster inquired.
"Ye-es, it's all right, but”
"Then, move on, please."
Word was quickly passed down the line that they
were to receive full pay, and the men received this
news with mingled satisfaction and disappointment.
The wind had been taken out of their sails. They
felt as David might when he went out to slay Goliath,
if he had found the giant reduced to half his own size.
The majority of the men were content to abide this
peaceful solution of the problem; but a few others,
stimulated by drink and evil passion, felt defrauded,
and were ready to enter on any new scheme of mis-
chief that should be proposed. Gale noticed them as
he went on with his work, and was glad when his
duties drew to a close. He observed a man outside,
leaning on the end of the stone sill, and watching
him curiously. He was dirty and unkempt, but
looked good-natured. The corners of his mouth
were stained with tobacco.
"You're pretty darned 'cute," he said, in an admir
ing tone, when he caught Sidney's eye, and during a
AT THE WORKS.
409
halt in the procession. Sidney modestly thanked
him. "Can I do anything for you?" he asked, a
moment after.
"Naw," the man drawled, leaning forward to let
escape a stream of tobacco-juice. "Shouldn't won-
der ef I mightn't do somethin' fer you bymeby."
Sidney did not know what this meant, and had no
time to inquire, the men closing up and pushing
towards the window. He noticed that his new ad-
mirer kept his place. There was still a large crowd
outside, the men who had been paid remaining to
watch events. Contempt for the cowardly super-
intendent ran higher each moment, and began to
mingle with vindictive anger. It would serve him
right to get him out and horsewhip him, some of the
men thought; others suggested that the nearest lamp-
post was a more convenient form of punishment, while
the fancy of a few fondly reverted to the historic tar-
barrel.
"Can't you get those men home quietly in some
way?" Sidney asked his new acquaintance after
the last man had been paid, and it was time to
close up.
"They'll go a good deal sooner ef nobody tries to
hev 'em," was the reply, as the speaker slowly trans-
ferred a huge quid from one cheek to the other. He
leaned forward on the stone sill, in his dirty shirt-
sleeves, and looked at Sidney shrewdly.
"He's in there, I suppose." Sidney appeared not
to hear, making a final entry in the ledger, and then
closing it.
410
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Then, I wisht, fer your sake, he wa'n't, -
that's all," the man added, in a more concerned
voice.
66
Why, what the mischief do these fellows want?”
the other asked, in some natural anger. "They have
got their pay. Let them walk off and mind their own
business." An evil-looking fellow, slouching towards
the window, overheard these words, and his face
showed an expression of vixenish triumph.
"We ain't a-goin' to walk off," he said, looking at
Sidney with cunning malevolence: "we're a-goin' to
walk in."
66
No, you're not," said Sidney, bending forward,
and looking his enemy squarely in the eye. "Not
a man of you gets in here to-night."
"By the livin' Lord, we'll see about that!" a
big fellow shouted from behind.
"Come on,
boys."
There was a yell of defiance, and twelve or fifteen
men rushed forward, while a number of others,
anxious to witness a row, but unwilling to partici-
pate in it, stood back and cheered them on.
“Ef old Dean was here, he'd stop this racket pretty
quick," Sidney heard his tobacco-chewing friend say.
For himself, he was so inspired with rage and detes-
tation that he lost all thought of fear. With a bound,
he had sprung through the window, on the broad ledge
outside.
"You cowards!" he cried, "
he cried, "you miserable cow-
ards!" His eyes blazed, and his hands were clinched.
His new ally had clambered to his side with the sleek
AT THE WORKS.
411
agility of a cat, and stood confronting his mates.
There was a murmur of surprise at this, and an inde-
cisive pause.
"Yes, boys, I'm on his side. He's the gamiest little
cock I ever see, and he ain't goin' to get no hurt ef I
kin help it."
The men sneered and swore at this a little.
"We don't want to hurt him," one of them cried
out, after a moment's parleying. "Let him clear out
and mind his business. It's the superintendent we're
after."
"The superintendent ain't here, boys; give ye my
word, he ain't here," their comrade said, in a mollify-
ing tone.
His listeners were a little staggered at this, but
only for a moment. "That Bill Dakin likes lyin'
almost as well as he does terbacker," Sidney heard
one of them say.
“All right,” the Hercules of the crowd replied, in
stentorian tones: "if he ain't there, then we sha'n't
hurt him; but we'll come and see for ourselves."
There was another yell at this, and a second rush
forward. Two or three stones crashed through the
window above Gale's head, and the man of the evil
countenance drew a rusty revolver from his pocket.
Sidney braced himself. A fierce, savage joy possessed
him. He felt that he could easily brain each man in
turn who should dare lay hands on him. The stranger
at his side spat on his hands, and prepared for action.
Just then a strange thing happened.
Across the charred roadway, lit by a few gleaming
412
A GIRL GRADUATE.
She
torches, flitted the figure of a young woman.
was bare-headed, her fair hair blown backwards by
the wind. A small red cape covered her shoulders.
She ran breathlessly up the low flight of steps
leading to the main entrance of the Works, and,
when at the top, turned to face the angry crowd
below.
"Men! men! what are you doing?" she cried, in
a sweet, piercing tone of rebuke. "Oh, go home. I
beg you to go home. I am Maggie Dean- Thomas
Dean's daughter," she ended, stretching out her arms,
as if invoking them by some mystic spell.
To Maggie it seemed as if she should always be
"named and known by that hour's deed." She had
sealed the bond of fate, thrown in her lot with that
of the class in which she was born. The faces of
many of these hard-working men had been familiar
to her since childhood; some of them were her father's
friends and associates. If any of them were to com-
mit a lawless act, she should suffer from it, she felt,
as if it were her own. Their disgrace would be her
father's and hers, as their wrongs and sufferings, she
now saw, should be hers also. Nothing on earth mat-
tered so much to her now as the right behavior of
these rough, ignorant men. The poor, vain wish to
be different from what she was had disappeared;
while certain facts in her past history, which had
stood out before in momentous prominence, the fact
that Judge Foster had wished to marry her, and that
Rector Fay had misused her, seemed of infinitesimal
consequence.
AT THE WORKS.
413
"Oh, friends,” she began again, bending towards
them, "it was my father sent me here. You all
know my father," her voice breaking.
"He is so
sorry for any injustice done you. He wants to help
you- he will help you; but he cannot if you get
angry and do wrong things. I know how hard it is
for some of you to get along, but you only make it
harder when you behave like this. You make other
people distrust and look down on us, and say cruel,
untrue things of us. I beg you to go home,"
she entreated them again. "I beg you to go
home."
If the angel of judgment had suddenly dropped
down in their midst, the men could not have been
more astonished. They were utterly routed and de-
feated. Those who had refrained from joining the
attacking party now gathered about Maggie, praising
and admiring.
"Three cheers for Thomas Dean!" one of them
cried, and the night air rang with the response.
"Three cheers for Thomas Dean's darter!" another
said, and this was given with a will. Maggie laughed
and cried, and waved her handkerchief, still urging
them to go home.
"We'll see you home first," one of them made gal-
lant response, and she had difficulty to prevent them
from executing this purpose.
"Mr. Dakin will go with me," she said at last,
turning to that not very respectable individual, who
looked the gratification he felt at this distinction.
He had never been called "Mr." before.
414
A GIRL GRADUATE.
The crowd good-naturedly dispersed, and Maggie
descended the steps. At the foot she came face to
This was the first knowledge
face with Sidney Gale.
she had of his presence.
side the window, but had taken it for the superin-
tendent's, his face being in shadow.
She had seen his figure out-
"Mr. Gale!" she exclaimed, drawing back in sur-
prise. Now that her venturesome act was accom-
plished, she found something in it to annoy her.
Certainly it was not pleasant to think Sidney Gale
had witnessed it.
"That was magnificently done, Miss Dean," he
burst out, impetuously. "There's no knowing what
would have happened next if you hadn't rushed in as
you did. By George! I never saw anything like it.
Litchfield owes you a vote of thanks."
"I don't want a vote of thanks," she replied, hur-
riedly. She was anxious to escape, but he stood
directly in her way. Bill Dakin, waiting near by,
looked at them a few moments; then, shrewdly sur-
mising his services as escort would not be needed,
lounged off in the other direction, solacing himself
with a fresh bite of his precious plug. Maggie saw
him depart with a little displeasure, silently submit-
ting to Gale's company, who took his place at her
side.
“How did you happen to be here?" she asked, as
they moved slowly down the road.
"I thought I had better be on hand in case my
friend needed me," was the answer.
"Mr. Lewis is your friend? I don't think you
AT THE WORKS.
415
1
are
to be congratulated on your choice," said
Maggie, with the girlish sarcasm he remembered
so well.
"Friendship is like some other things. You're not
always fully informed of your choice until you've
made it."
""
"He has treated these men shamefully," she said,
indignantly, "and is perfectly insufferable besides.'
Gale made a feeble attempt to defend the absent
superintendent.
"Of course, you must stand by him," she replied.
"I'll admit, however, that he is no coward. He
could never have faced that crowd of enraged men
as he did."
"I don't think I understand."
66
Why, as he stood there outside the office window.
Did you see that man with a pistol? "
"Yes, I saw him."
"You had better tell your friend that justice is as
essential a quality for a good superintendent, as
courage."
"I'll tell him."
They had reached the gate, and Maggie passed in-
side. As she turned to say good-night, he extended
his hand.
"By Heaven! Miss Dean, you don't begin to know
what a splendid piece of work you've done!" he ex-
claimed, a strong current of warm emotion rushing
over him. "Those fellows were ready to do any-
thing. You-you saved my life."
"Saved your life!" Maggie repeated, in the
416
A GIRL GRADUATE.
greatest surprise, and trying to withdraw her hand.
"What do you mean?”
"Well, you see Lewis wasn't the only one in
danger," he stammered. “I—I can't explain very
well, but it makes no difference. It doesn't con-
cern you to know it as much as it does me, any-
way."
"How could I have saved your life, when I didn't
know you were there?" she demanded.
"Oh, I'm willing to acquit you of the intention,"
he answered, with a melancholy smile. "But never
mind. What I wanted to say was that there isn't
another young woman I know would have dared do
such a thing. But you know what I've always
thought of you."
"Mr. Gale!"
Of
"Oh, I know I'm a great fool to say it now, but
it's true. There never was a girl like you.
course, I know you don't care a rush for me, and
never could."
"Mr. Gale, I don't wish you to speak to me in
that way. You have no right.".
"Why, because there is some one else? Then, I
hope he'll deserve his good fortune."
"I didn't mean that. I-I must go in now."
"Wait a minute. Are you angry?"
"No-not angry
""
“Then, shake hands," again taking hers in his.
"Good-night. God bless you!" he said, and his
voice choked a little, "but remember what I've
said. There never was a girl like you, - there never
:
AT THE WORKS.
!
417
will be." He pressed her hand in both his, bent sud-
denly and kissed it, then turned and left her.
Henry Parsons, standing in the shadow not far off,
was witness to this little scene, and, newly hurt and
despairing, returned heart-sick to his lonely room at
the hotel.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
In spite of the crippled condition succeeding his
accident, Thomas Dean had kept up a lively interest
in the Works, and a feeling of personal accountability
for everything going on there. He had been greatly
distressed over the late troubles, sympathizing with
his old friends and comrades, but cautioning them
against extreme measures, and giving them much
prudent counsel. They listened respectfully and
promised to heed his advice; but, outside with their
mates again, the men's sense of wrong broke out
anew, and their wise resolutions were forgotten.
There were times when, sitting in his wheeled chair,
surrounded by friends proud to do him the least ser-
vice, Thomas Dean felt like a king. Since the acci-
dent, he had grown to be a popular idol among his
fellow-townsmen; but who would not rather be a
living actor among his kind than raised to a place
of useless worship? He was not ungrateful, but he
felt that he had lost his true place and chance in the
world. When he heard of the mistakes the men
made, and saw their readiness to follow irresponsible
leaders, his physical ruin seemed but the symbol of
lost moral power, and he bitterly felt that his author-
ity and influence were at an end.
418
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
419
As Saturday night drew near, it was pitiful to see
him. All day he had been filled with nervous fears,
painfully shifting from one position to another, as he
sat imprisoned in his chair, bending his head in anx-
ious thought on the shrunken hands clasping his
stick, and letting many a troubled sigh escape him.
In the early evening, Maggie wheeled his chair near
the open door, where he could look across the bridge,
in the direction of the Works, and observe what was
going on. He made her take the lamp into the
kitchen, that he might see outside objects better. A
young moon was rising and shed a faint light over the
surrounding landscape.
Maggie and her father were alone, her mother
having taken her turn to visit Helen shortly after
the celebration. When the men took up their line
of march, and he caught sight of their dark forms
under the red torchlights, the engineer's anxiety
grew intense.
It was hardly relieved by the long
silence that followed during Sidney Gale's peaceful
prosecution of his task, especially as he could see
that the men were still hanging about the place. His
heart boded mischief.
66
"What are they doing?" he asked, impatiently.
"Why don't they go home if they've got their pay?"
Perhaps they haven't got their pay," Maggie said,
standing behind his chair and looking out on the
strange scene.
"Then, things'll get a mighty sort worse than they
be now.
Don't Myron Lewis know he can't fool
with men like that?”
;
.
420
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Dear father, don't worry so," said Maggie, bend-
ing over him. "You will make yourself ill. It isn't
your fault if there's trouble."
“Yes, it is —it is the fault of every one of us. It'll
be an everlastin' disgrace to the Works if any mis-
chief's done. And there ain't no need. It had
oughter be stopped."
"Well, father, you
66
know did try.'
you
""
"Hark! What's that!" he exclaimed, as the first
shout of the men, bent on paying a visit of vengeance
to the superintendent's office, reached their ears.
They're goin' to fight! I know it. Lord in heaven,
what fools men be! And I must sit here. I won't
do it-I" He bent forward, leaning his whole
weight on his stick, struggling to rise, then fell back
weakly. "I can't," he groaned. "I can't. And
there's nobody to tell 'em. They don't know what
they're doin', and there's nobody to tell 'em."
Maggie had never seen her slow, undemonstrative
father in such a state as this. She looked at him in
amazement. She was also frightened at the probable
effects of this excitement; but for a moment this
feeling was overlaid by another, the infection of his.
His indignation and alarm became hers, and his
righteous purpose flamed anew in her own breast.
"I will go, father. I will speak to them."
"You!" he exclaimed. Then, as he caught the
brave flash of her eye, and the look of ardent resolve
mantling her face, his own brightened.
"Yes-go-go," he said. "Tell them — tell
them "
!
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
421
"Never mind! I'll tell them you sent me," she said,
not pausing for instructions, but flinging the little red
cape over her shoulders, and running down the steps.
The next moment, she was speeding down the road.
A second shout reached the old man, now sitting
alone at home. This time it had a sinister sound,
that sent a new fear, like a dagger, through his
heart. His Maggie - he had sent her into danger!
What could a child like that do in a crowd of infuri-
ated men? She would be rudely jostled and in-
sulted, struck by some passing missile perhaps,
and brought back to him hurt and bleeding. This
sudden revulsion of thought was maddening, and he
groaned aloud. A moment after, a young man ran
up the steps and stood before him in the open door-
way. He had sought the house by a shorter path
leading through the little orchard, and so missed
sight of Maggie.
"Thank God, you have come!" exclaimed Thomas
Dean. "Go after her, bring her back. Let the fools
burn the whole town, if they want to."
"What do you mean?" Henry Parsons asked,
looking at the other in dull consternation.
"I mean Maggie-my little girl, Maggie. She's
down there in that crowd of yelling madmen. I let
her go. God forgive me. She'll be killed-she-
Man alive, are you never going?" he asked, bringing
his stick, with heavy force, to the floor, to emphasize
his commands.
Parsons, who had stood staring at him with as-
tounded and fear-struck countenance, wheeled sharply
422
A GIRL GRADUATE.
about, and the next instant was flying in the direction
of the Works. When he reached the scene of action,
he saw Maggie standing at the top of the steps, speak-
ing to the crowd of men below. He had been thor-
oughly frightened, and the re-action of finding her
safe overcame him a moment, and he leaned diz-
zily against a tree for support. He kept himself in
shadow, for he feared to displease Maggie by letting
her see him. He could not hear what she was saying,
but the admiring shouts of the men told how it was
received. After the crowd dispersed and she ran
down the steps, he came out from his hiding-place,
meaning to join her. He stopped short when he saw
some one emerge from the building's shadow and
speak to her, for he recognized Sidney Gale. He
was ashamed of himself, but to save his life he felt
he could not help retracing his steps and keeping
them in sight. He was a witness to the parting in-
terview at the gate, saw Gale take Maggie's hand in
his and bend to print a lover-like salute on it; but
what hurt him most was to observe how Maggie re-
mained a moment in her place after her companion
had left her, bending forward in the dim moonlight
to look after him. When she turned and passed into
the house, he had no wish or motive to follow.
It was evident enough now that Maggie had always
loved Sidney Gale. Some quarrel or misunderstand-
ing had kept them apart, which now seemed drawing
to an end. If they were not accepted lovers, that part-
ing scene at the gate indicated they soon would be.
It was her feeling for another man, and not, as he had
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
423
once or twice wildly hoped, the dawn of a new senti-
ment towards her boy-lover of the past, that lay at
the bottom of her variable and perplexing treat-
ment of himself.
Maggie had found it difficult to regulate her be-
havior towards this returned friend, and occupied
herself with many puzzling conjectures on his own
manner and conduct. Henry Parsons had paid sev-
eral visits at the house, since his return to Litchfield;
but she never appropriated them to herself, giving
her father the full credit and benefit of them. The
two men played checkers together, and the younger
told long stories of Western life and adventure,
Maggie trying to go about her household tasks as
usual.
Sometimes it seemed to her that their visitor ad-
dressed his remarks less to his immediate listener than
to another, sitting apart, and only inferentially inter-
ested in the conversation. Occasionally, under some
unaccountable impulse, she would join the talk, break-
ing through its masculine gravity with sprightly jests
and sarcasms, addressed, apparently, to her father,
but glancing off in another direction. Generally,
however, she obeyed a different impulse, and kept,
for her, strangely quiet. Once or twice only had she
and Henry Parsons been left alone together, at which
times Maggie's spirits either ran so high as to deprive
her companion of breath and understanding, or de-
serted her altogether, so that she grew angry with her-
self for her foolish shyness. It was not the shyness
that tempts a waiting lover, however, and to Parsons
424
A GIRL GRADUATE.
•
she seemed at such times only distantly polite. Maggie
wished now she had never seen the letters to Helen,
and was tempted to burn them for the embarrassing
remembrance they afflicted her with, and for the cheat-
ing intelligence they had conveyed. Parsons, on his
side, true to his native habit of self-disparagement,
reviewed his motives and conduct from the poorest
point of view his melancholy imagination could find,
and rebuked his folly in unsparing terms for return-
ing to his old home at all. He could not correct the
folly, but he could bring it to an end by leaving
Litchfield at once. He went back to his hotel after
the events described, to pack his trunk and inform
his landlord that he should take the midnight train
West on the following Sunday. He spent the next
morning at church, and accepted Mrs. Fay's invita-
tion to dine at the rectory.
Maggie did not go to church, not wishing to leave
her father, who had not rested well and rose late.
They ate a quiet dinner together, and he told her of
Parsons's visit the night before. Maggie was newly
disturbed at this news. Whatever Henry Parsons
might think of her conduct, he would not, she felt
sure, praise it as Sidney Gale had done; and failure to
praise from this source Maggie had learned to con-
strue into some measure of blame. In the afternoon
she left her father in charge of a neighbor, who had
come in to talk over the events of last evening, and
went out for a walk along the Race. The air was
full of autumn sunshine, and the woods shone in
russet and gold, threaded with creepers of scarlet
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
425
woodbine. Maggie, in her brown dress and red cape,
looked a part of the surrounding scene, and not un-
like a forest dryad escaped from some shaggy tree-
trunk near by. She came to the spot where a memo-
rable conversation had been held, over two years ago.
She had not called it hers since, and had fallen out of
the habit of visiting the Race. Now she paused and
looked around. Her old seat under the large oak had
been destroyed. Two or three elms near by had been
felled, depriving the place of its sheltered seclusion.
She wanted to throw herself down in the sunny hol-
low between the stumps, but the situation was a little
exposed, and she walked lingeringly on, the shallow
stream flowing murmurously at her side.
Half a mile farther on, her ear caught the sound of
footsteps approaching from the opposite direction.
She did not know whether to go forward or to retrace
her steps. The path was narrow, and the Race was
sometimes the resort of unpleasant company. While
she hesitated, a young man's figure emerged from be-
hind a straggling blackberry bush, and she stood face
to face with Henry Parsons. They looked at each
other in mutual surprise and embarrassment, amount-
ing almost to consternation. Parsons had taken a
roundabout road from the rectory, past the big plan-
ing-mill that stood at one end of the town, through the
wooded pasture that bordered the Race, to pay a fare-
well visit, he could not easily avoid, to his old friend.
"I-I was going to see your father," he said. "I
am going away to-night."
"Going away-to-night!" she repeated, in the
F
职
​426
A GIRL GRADUATE.
utmost astonishment. Then, remembering she had
no right to show such feeling, she summoned a less
concerned manner when she spoke again.
"You go suddenly, do you not?"
"No- that is, yes;-but I have already over-
staid my time."
There was nothing to do but turn and accompany
him back to the house, though she did it reluctantly.
The little stream seemed to plash and fall along its
pebbled course with a noisier movement, jibing and
laughing at them. The rap of a blue-jay's beak on a
branch above their heads sounded like an advancing
drum-beat, and every feature of the surrounding land-
scape took on a clearer distinctness to eye and ear.
"Time is a very precious article in Dakota, I sup-
pose," Maggie said, with a touch of her old-time
mockery. If she must talk at all, it must be in her
own fashion.
"I don't know," was the absent reply. "I have
sometimes been compelled to dispose of mine at a
rather heavy discount."
His listener did not choose to follow the lead of re-
marks like this, and remained silent.
"I saw you last night," he said, turning abruptly
towards her. She blushed furiously.
""
"I mean when you were speaking to those men,
he added, confusedly. "Your father was frightened
and sent me to find you," he explained.
"Yes, I know," she replied, hurriedly, anxious to
dismiss the topic.
"It was fine," he said, in a voice trembling with
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
427
suppressed feeling; "it was inspiring. I shall never
forget it, nor how you looked as you stood there."
"It was nothing," she said. "I couldn't help it,
so I deserve no praise. I'm glad, of course, if I
prevented a disturbance. I felt if anything happened
I should never get over it.”
"If anything had happened to Sidney Gale, that
is," her companion silently interpreted.
"Do you think Mr. Lewis will treat the men better
after this?" she asked, to keep up the talk, and glad
of a safe topic.
"He won't get the chance." She looked her failure
to understand this remark.
"Don't you know Lewis left for Chicago on the
midnight train?" he asked. "He couldn't do any-
thing else, after proving himself the miserable coward
he did."
"Coward!" she repeated, in surprise.
“I call a man a coward who refuses to perform a
duty, and lets his friend face the danger he dare not.
But I doubt if Mr. Gale finds further use for such a
friendship."
"Mr. Gale! Do you mean Mr. Gale took his friend's
place last night?”
"Didn't you know it?" Parsons asked, bewildered.
"And was it he I saw facing that crowd of angry
men?"
He then related to her the whole story of the night's
proceedings. Maggie listened with suspended breath
and changing color.
"What must he think of me?" she murmured
·
428
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"How blind I was - how unjust!"
The man at her
side felt more perplexed and hopeless than before.
Maggie was lost in repentant thoughts a few mo-
ments.
"What strange and unfair mistakes we make about
people!" she said at last, in a regretful tone.
"Yes, we sometimes make mistakes," the other re-
plied, mechanically.
“But, after all, perhaps it is only fair," she added,
brightening a little. "People make cruel mistakes
about us sometimes." She was thinking of Mrs.
Briggs and Rector Fay, but the one who heard her
could not but take this as a direct reference to him-
self.
"Will you never forgive me for that?" he asked,
quickly.
66
Forgive you for what?"
Then, catching his
meaning in his look, she stammered an explanation.
“I did not mean that; —I—I was thinking of some-
thing else.”
They had reached a spot where three stumps of
new-felled trees enclosed a sunny hollow covered
with dead grass. He stopped and looked about him
with a doubtful air.
"Yes, it is the same place," he said, in a low tone,
catching sight of a tangled rosebush that had caught
Maggie's dress that day. "Yet it seems changed."
"They have cut down some trees," she replied, in
as matter-of-fact a tone as she could summon.
"You are right. We make strange mistakes
fatal mistakes. I thought you were vain and selfish,
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
429
though I loved you, for all that. But now I see it
was I who was selfish, and tyrannical, as you said. I
was always teasing and troubling you, wanting to
gather up all your sweetness and brightness for
myself. Now I see I had no more right or power
to do that than to gather up the sunshine and im-
prison it in my trunk."
This turn in the talk startled Maggie, and she
stood flushing and trembling.
Such love-making
was very sweet and touching, but she did not quite
know what to do with a homage offered in so abased
a spirit. And it is difficult to reply to a lover who
speaks in the past tense.
"And that other time—I must speak of that. I
shall never forget my brutal conduct that day. I was
mad and full of despair. You can never forgive it, I
know. I do not deserve you should."
He would fall down and roll himself in the dust
next, she was afraid. She kept quite still. The air,
too, was full of the brooding stillness of late Septem-
ber. A yellow leaf fluttered downwards. She caught
and held it in her hand.
"They don't seem so important, our mistakes about
people," she said at last, "after we have- have cor-
rected them. If your bad opinion of me has changed,
I shall have to forgive you, of course."
This seemed a very bold speech to the one uttering
it, and she tried to cover it with a little archness.
"I never had a bad opinion of you."
"Oh, now you are growing inconsistent.”
"You are the woman I love. What does a man's
430
A GIRL GRADUATE.
*
opinion of a woman matter after he has said that?”
Maggie thought it did matter a little, but could not
say so, her heart standing still to hear what should
follow.
"The thought of you is as deeply implanted in me
as the instinct of life itself is part of that instinct.
Without you I only half live- rather, I do not live.
at all. I only exist." A silence followed, but his
listener could not break it.
“I don't know whether I meant to tell you this
again or not. I must have known I should if the
chance ever presented itself. A man can't talk
nothings to the only woman who for him has any
existence. If I must not speak what my heart is full
of, I must not speak to you at all."
Maggie wondered why he thought he had been for-
bidden.
“You need not give yourself the pain of answering
me," he went on, with saddest resignment. "I know
how you dislike to hurt any one, even me. But I
shall never trouble you again. I am going away. I
should like to say good-by here."
She started, a quick pang of fear darting through
her. He was going, in a moment would be gone, and
he had given her no chance to hinder him. What can
a woman do with a lover who declares himself in this
fashion, whose words of love are of that self-renuncia-
tory order that continually hold her away from him?
“Are you not going in to see father?" she asked,
hesitatingly, catching at this little excuse for the de-
tention of a purpose she knew she must prevent the
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
431
execution of in some way. He gave a little start of
recollection. "I will see your father, of course."
Their eyes caught each other, hers with a timid,
pleading look, pierced the next moment with a roguish
gleam that spread and overran in silent laughter.
"Maggie!" he exclaimed, in quick, glad entreaty,
stepping towards her with outstretched hands, but
not daring to touch her yet.
“How can I answer when I've not been asked any-
thing?" she said, with a tremulous smile, and raising
her hand to keep him back. He caught it, and drew
her towards him; and there, by the little stream, on
whose banks they had set up housekeeping so many
times when they were children, they replighted their
troth. They had much to say to each other, and the
sun was sending level beams through the trees. when
Maggie remembered her father.
"Oh, what a wicked girl I am!" she cried, spring-
ing from the ground where they were sitting. "He
is alone. We must go in at once. You must tell
him," she added, as they drew near the house.
They found him dozing in his chair. "What a
shame, father, for me to leave you so long!" she
said, bending penitently over him. "Here is Mr.
Parsons, — come to say good-by," she added, in a
lower tone, and casting a mischievous glance over
her shoulder.
"Henry, Henry here?" her father said, slowly
—
rousing himself. "Well, you didn't find Maggie last
night?" he added, as the young man stepped forward
and took his hand.
432
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"No, but I found her to-day." He put out his
hand and drew Maggie towards him. "I don't mean
to lose her again," he said.
Thomas Dean looked at them. His face quivered
with emotion. “Maggie!" he exclaimed, "and Henry
too! We've always wanted it so your mother and
me, but lately we didn't know"
"Father!" cried Maggie, sinking on her knees at
his side, "I am the worst girl in the world, to think
of leaving you," and burst into excited tears.
""Twon't be easy, for a fact,
that part won't," he
replied, a regretful look creeping over his face, and
laying his hand on the bright head.
have your mother."
"But I shall
"We'll take you out to Dakota with us," said Par-
sons, encouragingly. The older man shook his head.
He was past the time of transplanting; his roots had
struck too deep in his present soil.
Maggie and bade her dry her tears.
He kissed
Parsons staid as late as only a lover dares, then
went back to his hotel to report a change of plans,
and say that his return West was indefinitely post-
poned. Maggie wrote the news to her mother, who
was well content, but newly aggrieved at the prospect
of a second hurried wedding. She returned home at
once. Helen was also pleased, and felt all her anxie-
ties about Maggie at an end. John Norton, never
having seen Henry Parsons, man-like, withheld his
opinion, writing Maggie a scolding letter for daring
to commit such an important act without consulting
him.
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
433
"John Norton is the best man I know," she said,
speaking with deliberation, and folding the letter she
had just read to her lover.
He smiled in an untroubled fashion.
"I'm per-
fectly willing he should be, so long as he is married
to Helen."
"Yes, he just suits Helen." A look of amused
recollection broke over her face. "I had such a
queer fancy about Helen once," she said, looking at
him demurely. "Didn't you and she use to corre-
spond?"
He hesitated a moment, then admitted they did.
She smiled provokingly.
"I asked her to write because I wanted to hear
about you,” he explained.
"How very flattering!—to her, I mean; but Helen
is capable of any amount of self-sacrifice. I've al-
ways been a trial to her, until she got married. Then
she handed me over to John."
“I feel like having it out with ‘John.' What is it
you admire him so much for, anyway?"
“Well, in the first place," leaning leisurely back in
her low rocker, and preparing to descant on a favor-
ite theme," he has the broadest mind of any man I
know. Of course, women don't count. They're in-
tense, but not broad."
"I think I've heard that observation before. Do
you think Miss Graham would agree with you?"
"No, because she is herself too marked an example.
I don't mean he is a remarkable scholar, or even,
perhaps, the profoundest thinker, but he is so
434
A GIRL GRADUATE.
hospitable in his thought. He has positively no
prejudices."
"I hope that isn't because he has no convictions."
"He has plenty of convictions, but he is willing
other people should have theirs. Then, he is so good,
without trying to be, you know, or making other
people painfully conscious of his superiority. And
so delicate-minded, like a woman; and honorable,
like a man; and with the best manners in the world,
and a perfect temper; and he isn't afraid of a little
fun, if he is a minister, and, and-isn't that enough?
"It will do. I think he deserves to marry us.
When shall we ask him to do it?"
""
Maggie had tried to be wilful on this point, and
fix a day somewhere near the close of the century;
but Parsons let it be understood that he did not mean
to go back to Dakota without her, and she was per-
suaded, at least, to an early date in November, not
wishing, she said, to imperil the interests of the rising
territory by keeping him away too long.
Mrs. Dean declared she had more than a dozen pairs
of hands could do in the busy weeks that followed;
nor did she find Maggie the most ready assistant, who
liked the task of sewing no better because of its con-
nection with a wedding outfit. But she liked visiting
with her lover. They went nutting together, and
took long, dreamful walks through the October
woods; and the better acquaintance they thus derived
of each other fitted them as well, perhaps, for duties
to come as if Maggie had spent all her time in hem-
ming ruffles.
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
435
She had a rather vague idea of the kind of life
she should lead in Dakota, or her lover's position.
He was not very communicative about himself, and
she did not like to ask questions.
One day he put a diamond ring on her finger. She
was greatly surprised. She had not supposed Henry
Parsons would approve of diamonds, even if he could
afford to buy them. She turned her finger about, to
catch the glitter of the broken rays, with childlike de-
light, while he watched her with a man's superior
gravity. Then she ceased to admire, and began to
scold him for his extravagance. He defended him-
self by saying he didn't intend to be engaged but
once.
"A plain gold would have done just as well," she
said, severely, "and could have been used for a wed-
ding ring besides.”
"But being married is quite different from being
engaged. Each event is important, and deserves its
separate symbol. I wonder why they select the
plainer one for the final ceremony?"
"Because in marriage you come down to plain,
practical life,” she answered, with an experienced air.
"Before that all is glittering hope and expectation,'
lifting her finger to catch the pretty sparkle of the
stone once more.
"No, it is because the plain gold stands for simple
“Shall we
truth and perfection," her lover replied.
buy our furniture in Chicago?" he asked, a few
minutes later.
“Furniture!" exclaimed Maggie. "I didn't know
436
A GIRL GRADUATE.
we were to have any-at first." He smiled, and
said he thought they had better lay in a few chairs.
"Have you written to engage a house?" she asked
him, during this discussion.
"Oh, I engaged the house before I came away."
She dropped her sewing and looked at him. They
were sitting on the little side-porch, and Maggie was
trying to help her mother.
"I own a house, you know, two or three, in fact;
but I built this one-on purpose," he ended, with a
slight smile.
"On purpose for what?" she demanded.
"To have an excuse for thinking about you. It's
a two-story-and-basement brick, with Queen Anne
front. They're beginning to build in city style out
there. I don't know as you'll like a house in a block,
but if you don't we'll build another."
All this sounded very opulent to Maggie, but she
did not mean to be overcome. She looked at him
with severe thoughtfulness a moment.
“I don't think I approve of your being so success-
ful, at least, not so quick. I've heard that the slow-
est successes are the surest."
"I haven't been unduly successful, I think. Some
of the houses are not paid for. There's our famous
citizen, Colonel White, he made three millions in
two years."
"I call that perfectly wicked," said Maggie, who
had read Karl Marx with Miss Graham, and become
imbued with some levelling ideas.
"Yes, I shoull feel a little culpable for that, my
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
437
r
self. But Colonel White isn't a bad man.
He has
He's
done a great deal of good with his money.
going to build us a university. He is a distant rela-
tive of Mr. Danvers." Maggie took up her sewing.
“Do you admire Laura Danvers as much as every-
body else?" she asked.
“I don't admire everybody else."
"As much as everybody else admires her, I mean.'
"I don't know," was the careless reply.
"She
seems a sensible young woman. She congratulated
me very prettily on our engagement, the other day.
She said you and she were in the same class together,
and that you were the brightest scholar there."
"I'm much obliged to her; but she was the most
thorough. Then, you approve of young women study-
ing medicine?
""
"I never thought much about it. Young women
in the abstract haven't interested me much," with his
grave smile.
"It's just as Miss Graham says: we shall never get
men to think as seriously on these subjects as women
do," she said, with a discouraged accent.
"They are not the men's affairs."
"That is your superficial way of looking at it. If
a woman wants to get into a carriage, a man thinks
that is his affair, and opens the door for her; but if
she wants to go to college, he says that isn't his
affair, and tells her to build one for herself."
"Did you want to go to college?" he asked, a
little uneasy, as men are apt to become when the
woman they care for talks in this strain.
·438
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"Miss Graham did," was the deft response. "Miss
Graham admires Laura Danvers beyond anything,"
relapsing into her girlish speech. "She is very much
disappointed in me."
“I should like to know why?" her lover inquired,
in a disapproving tone.
"Well, I'm not going to study medicine. I'm only
engaged to be married. And, then, I lost my school”—
"Did she blame you for that? "
"Not really blame me, perhaps, but she couldn't
help being disappointed. People's misfortunes are
laid up against them, as well as their faults. She had
depended on me to introduce the Froebel system in
Litchfield."
"Well, I'm not disappointed in you," her listener
said, bending over and catching her hand in his a
moment.
Another talk, which took place shortly before their
marriage, was of a different character. They had
gone out, one evening, on an errand for Maggie's
mother, and, returning, passed the place where he
was born.
The moon was in her first quarter, send-
ing a tender radiance over everything, and touching
the dilapidated little cottage with a new pathos and
even a little beauty. The gate had long since dropped
from its fastenings, and, without speaking,-follow-
ing an unusual impulse, for he generally avoided the
spot, Parsons led Maggie inside.
She was a little surprised. She had always
known, of course, that this was her lover's birth-
place and early home, and that the shadow of deep
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
439
sorrow and misfortune hung over it; but these facts
had never taken strong hold of her consciousness, nor
could she know what struggling emotions of grief, de-
spair and shame were at work in the heart of her
companion. To-night these feelings were softened a
little by Maggie's presence and the knowledge of
her love, but also a little imbittered.
His own
past seemed so desolate and bare beside hers. It was
a spotted name and lineage she would receive from
him, redeemed slightly, perhaps, by his own indus-
trious effort, but bearing always a shamed regret for
the past, and menace towards the future.
She had seated herself on the decaying doorstep,
waiting for him to speak, and wondering why he had
brought her there, while he stood near, with arms
folded moodily across his breast, and gave himself
up to his own dark thoughts. A deep sigh escaped
him. She rose and laid her hand on his arm.
"What is it?" she asked gently, looking up at
him in the pale light, and catching sight of his
troubled countenance. He covered her hand with his.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, with a slight shudder, "I
sometimes think I dare not call or make you mine.
A horrible threatening cloud hangs over me, and I
seem to see I shall do you nothing but harm."
"Harm-do me harm?" she repeated, in a puzzled
tone.
66
My father was an outcast among men. What
right has the son to hope to become anything better
-to escape the sin and misery he has fallen heir
to? They tell me that when he married my mother
440
A GIRL GRADUATE.
he was as promising a young man as any other. My
mother loved and trusted him, yet almost at once he
began drinking, and from that time was a ruined
man. Some little seed of vice, planted no one knows
when or where, but as much a part of the family
heritage, perhaps, as this dark skin of mine, took
sudden root and grew like the poisonous Upas, until
it sapped and strangled every quality of manhood in
him. I tell you," gripping her hand until he hurt
her, "no man knows what power of evil is in him,
nor when some sly opportunity will reveal him for
what he is, a weak coward or a villain. And when
I think of my mother"- his voice broke.
"It is
always the woman who suffers most in such cases.
My God!" taking her face in his hands, and bending
it upwards, "I would rather never see you again than
make you suffer like that." She looked at him with
startled and terrified eyes. Never had she imagined
the possibility of a scene like this.
"Oh, hush!" she said. "Don't say such things!
I didn't know you had such dreadful thoughts.
They are wicked, and you frighten me."
This outburst past, he grew quiet, and folded his
arm protectingly about her, to shield her from her
fear of himself.
"You are morbid you don't know what you are
saying. We ought not to have come this way."
"I love you so much," he said, not heeding her,
and speaking with mournful tenderness, "that it
would be far easier to give you up now than to give
you a day's unhappiness."
""
•
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
441
“Oh, how wildly you talk!" she said, with a little
"I never saw you like this.
sob.
from this place."
99
Let us go away
"It is here. I
the thought of
“What use?” he drearily asked.
see it always. I can never get rid of
it. I tell you no man has the right to bestow such a
heritage of undeserved wrong and suffering on a
child, as my father did," he broke out again, “to
make him almost curse the day he was born," he
went on, with increasing excitement, "to make his own
memory only a cause of loathing and shame, to"
Maggie heard these words with a new fear and a
great moral shock. She quickly freed herself from
her lover, and stood facing him with large, reproach-
ful eyes.
"Oh, how wicked you are!" she said. "Hush!" as
he looked down at her in astonishment, and tried to
speak. "I will not let you talk like that. It is
wrong and cruel, and besides it is not true."
"Not true," he repeated, in a wondering tone.
"Nothing is true that is only half true, and nothing
is so wicked as to turn against those who truly be-
long to us, who have given us life. They are ours
always, no matter what faults and hardship they
bring us. Your father is your father."
He looked at her in stupefied surprise, mingled
with rising awe. Maggie had spoken with that
strong, impulsive energy which comes from heart-
moving conviction, as if she had suddenly reached
some divine conclusion which belonged not to her
listener alone.
442
A GIRL GRADUATE.
"".
"I am not angry," she said, bending towards him
in atonement of words that might have sounded
harsh, the moonlight falling on her upturned face,
"and I am sorry. I am sorry for you. But! oh!
never talk like that again," with earnest appeal in
voice and eyes.
"Never think such thoughts. They
make you seem so hard. You should not have harsh
thoughts of him, you who are so strong. He may
have suffered, too, and he was weak. Miss Graham
says such things are a disease."
"That does not hinder disgrace from following."
"Now you are thinking only of yourself," she
sweetly reproached him. "Nothing can disgrace or
hurt us but our own wrong-doing, Mrs. Fay once told
me. And he is your father. There must have been
good as well as evil in him, and he has given you
nothing but the good. You should remember that."
Parsons had never been preached to in this way
before, and it gave him a new feeling, indescrib-
ably strange and sweet, to have Maggie for the
preacher, who did not always take higher moral
ground than he did. The womanly compassion in her
words moved him in a new way, stirring pity and
love where feelings of injury and loss had reigned;
but the logical truth of what she had uttered struck
deeper still. Her quick insight had reached higher
ground than his coarse reasoning could.
“You are better than I am," he said humbly, “and
you are right. I will never think or speak ill of him
again." She took his arm and pressed it in kindly
pardon.
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING.
443
"Don't think I don't understand," she whispered.
"You have been lonely all your life, and obliged to
stand outside many things you felt you needed
and had a right to. I know just how you feel. But
I seem to see things so differently of late. We can-
not change ourselves much, our real, inward selves,
I mean; and when we learn to look at things right, we
don't want to, because we see how truly we belong
and are needed in our present place, and of how little
use we should be anywhere else."
Serious discourse like this was unlike the talk
Maggie used to indulge in two years ago, and it fell
a little strangely on her lover's ears now; but this
new knowledge he was gaining of her day by day
only added a deepening surprise and joy to his love.
They walked slowly towards the gate.
they turned to look back.
Outside,
"The place has been sold again," he said, "and the
man who has bought it is to build. Soon everything
will be changed."
6
"Then, we will say good-by," she said, and waved
her hand towards the little house. The other lifted
his hat. Moved by the same impulse, and under the
same tide of warm, exalted feeling which had seized
her a few moments before, Maggie laid her cheek on
the weather-beaten gate-post. "He is sorry," she
said, in a low, caressing tone. "He will not do it
again;" and her words seemed to carry an accent of
forgiveness, besought and granted at the same moment.
.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A SHOWER OF RICE.
THE reconciliation between Maggie and Bertha
Fay was effected as completely as such reconcilia-
tions are apt to be. The two came together, inspired
by the single desire to take up their former friend-
ship at the point where it had ended two years before;
but this proved not easy, though Bertha suffered
less disappointment than Maggie. Her easy tempera-
ment contentedly accepted the good she had, without
those subtle questionings and doubts Maggie had
learned to indulge in. She rejoiced in the new pos-
session of her friend, whom she found the same bright,
frank, loving Maggie as of old. Maggie, however,
was conscious of a vague disappointment, though dis-
pleased with herself for recognizing it. It was not
that Bertha had changed so much, as that she seemed
to have stood still. She had once been the more
womanly of the two, Maggie remembered; better be-
haved, and with a more careful judgment, — which
Maggie often acted on in place of her own, making
Bertha, as she had said, her "walking conscience.”
She was womanly still, and her manners were all
right, of course; but a certain childlike quality in-
hered in all her words and actions, which her critics
might perhaps have attributed to dulness or to a
slight moral inertia. Bertha had grown quite stout,
፡
444
A SHOWER OF RICE.
445
and the task of carrying about so much unnecessary
flesh perhaps hindered the free operation of mental
instincts. She had inherited this physical feature
from her father, who had early shown a slight ten-
dency to corpulence; but as he never showed any-
thing but a tendency anywhere, it stopped here in an
incipient stage.
Maggie's disappointment in her old friend began
with the knowledge of Bertha's engagement to Judge
Foster. She could not understand it, nor Bertha's
way of talking about it.
"Were you surprised?" the latter asked, after she
had confided her open secret to the latter.
They were sitting together in Maggie's room, under
the sloping roof. Maggie was conscious of hesitating
longer than she should for a suitable reply.
"It would be only natural," Bertha said, com-
posedly. "He is so much older than I."
"I don't suppose that makes any difference if-if
you care for him," was the reply.
"Of course I care for him," the other said, with a
little dignity. "He has been most kind and atten-
tive. Papa is very much pleased."
"I should think he would be." Maggie felt a
little guilty over the ambiguous nature of this re-
mark, but she knew not what else to say.
“And
your mother, how does she feel about it?"
“Mamma was more surprised than any one, I think.
She cried a good deal when I told her. She will miss
me, you know; but she has a great respect for Judge
Foster."
446
A GIRL GRADUATE.
2
The scene between mother and daughter, thus
hinted at, deserves further description.
"Do you love him, Bertha?" her mother asked,
clasping her child in her arms, but holding her back
from her a little, that she might look at her.
"Oh, yes, I think so, mamma," was the undisturbed
reply.
"Marriage is such a very solemn thing, my
daughter. Nothing but the purest, strongest love
justifies it. You do not have to marry, Bertha. It
is nothing against a girl if she remains single. You
are not acting from any such wrong and foolish
motive as that, I hope."
"Of course not, mamma, though I think papa
would be disappointed if I were never to marry. I
shouldn't like to disappoint papa."
"It is right to try to please your father, but there
is no hurry. You are young yet, Bertha; and your
own feeling,—you owe it to Judge Foster, as well as
to yourself, to think very carefully about that. Sup-
pose he were poor and with no position, would you
still wish to marry him?" The girl hesitated a
moment.
"If he were very different from what he is, more
like some one else than himself, I should not feel the
same towards him, I suppose," she replied, a little
crossly. Her mother turned disheartened away.
She did not know how it was, but during the past
two years she had seemed gradually to lose her hold
on this daughter, once nearer to her, she felt, than to
any one else; but whose pliant disposition had yielded
A SHOWER OF RICE.
447
more and more readily of late to her father's influence,
whose society was more entertaining than her mother's,
and who liked to profit by a pair of youthful hands
and feet ready to do him service.
"Do you think love-matches are always the happi-
est, mamma?" Bertha continued, with an accent at
once self-excusing and otherwise suggestive.
66 Of
course, I shall love my husband; but papa says reason
as well as love should be considered in marriage. I
know girls who have married for love and been very
unhappy." She knew something else besides. She
had come to comprehend many things within the last
two years that only grieved and puzzled her before.
She knew her mother's had been a love-match.
"That is true, Bertha," the latter replied wearily.
"Love may bring unhappiness, but there are worse
things than such unhappiness, and one is the absence
of all power or wish to love." The daughter did not
understand this, and, a little hurt and offended, left
the room. Afterwards, Mrs. Fay blamed herself, as
she often had before, for undue severity. She did
not lack in tenderness, only did not know always
how to use it, but in this case she felt it would have
been of no avail. There are degrees of moral en-
lightenment which each soul must find and fit to its
own needs; and perhaps it is as unwise to feed the
conscience, as the mind, beyond its present power of
assimilation and growth. Bertha was by no means
without a conscience. She would always be a good
daughter, generous and kind, capable, in certain ways,
of much self-sacrifice; but she was one of those in
1
448
A GIRL GRADUATE.
•
whom the intellectual currents, deprived of some
stated source of supply, flow more sluggishly from
year to year, inevitably, if slowly, inducing a state of
moral indifferentism. With Bertha gone, lost in a
double sense, contentedly settling down into a life
of luxury and ease, which her father would share and
make his own in ways the mother could not, Mrs.
Fay saw herself growing more lonely and farther
apart from those nearest her, during the years to
come.
The talk of the two girls in Maggie's chamber
wandered off into reminiscences of their school-days,
coming back to present events, and a pleased exami-
nation of each other's engagement ring.
"How strange we should be married so near
together!" said Bertha. The date for her own wed-
ding was fixed near Thanksgiving. "I did not sup-
pose I should ever marry," she added, with engaging
frankness, slipping the ring she had taken off back
on her finger.
Maggie listened to her friend with growing won-
der, trying to speak naturally in return, but finding
it difficult.
"You see it isn't as if I had always had a great
many admirers, like you, Maggie. No one ever cared
for me before—in that way."
"You foolish old
Maggie was touched at this.
dear!" she cried, throwing her arms about her, "I
didn't know I had so many admirers. I suspect I've
spent more time thinking about people who didn't
admire me.”
:
A SHOWER OF RICE.
449
F
"You haven't told me anything about Mr. Parsons,"
Bertha said, as she rose to go. "I've done all the
talking."
"There isn't much to tell, except that he is a young
man of very decided opinions, who has a way of
frowning at you when you disagree with him, that I
don't find very promising."
"Yes, I've heard papa say he was a very earnest
character." "Tiresomely earnest" had been the rec-
tor's verdict, after the lately renewed acquaintance
with his former protégé. Judge Foster says he is
66
sure to make his mark some day."
"Judge Foster is very kind," Maggie replied dryly.
She supposed, satirically, the judge thought he had
already made his mark.
"It's very romantic, your having known each other
so long, and being little lovers when you were chil-
dren. I don't suppose people would call mine a very
romantic marriage," and she repeated what she had
said to her mother, that love-matches were not always
the happiest. Maggie thought it a part of friendship
to agree to this, and supposed not.
"I'm not certain but there is more danger of quar-
relling with your husband if you think a good deal of
him, and that a little mutual indifference isn't the
best guaranty for married peace and happiness.
""
"Now you are getting satirical, Maggie," her friend
laughed, comfortably. "Fancy my ever disputing the
opinion of Judge Foster! I shouldn't want to marry a
man I couldn't look up to," she ended, a little primly.
"Oh, we all say that!" Maggie replied; "but the
•
450
A GIRL GRADUATE.
necessity of always looking up on one side implies
that of always looking down on the other, which
would soon lead to a double set of aborted neck-
muscles. I mean my husband shall look up to me
in some things."
Maggie pondered a good deal over this recon-
structed friendship. It hurt as well as surprised her
to have Bertha act from a poorer standard than she
would have chosen, and the missing sense of guiltiness
in her friend seemed in some inexplicable way to have
become hers; repentance for the sins of those we love
being even a more difficult process than for our own.
She could not refrain from imparting some of her
troubled thoughts to Miss Graham.
"I don't understand it," she said: "when we were
at school together, it was always Bertha who had bet-
ter ideas about things than I had. She was so careful
in little things, and had an unfailing sense of propri-
ety. I was always making mistakes. She had to keep
me in order at least, tried to."
""
"Propriety is a very thin shaving of character,'
said Miss Graham. "Some of the most selfish and
cruel people I know are the most punctilious in out-
ward behavior. They know how to enter and leave
a room, and wouldn't offend Mrs. Grundy for the
world; but they have no more heart or moral aspi-
ration than Poll over there.'
""
Here that accomplished bird began to bob up and
down on her perch and chatter volubly: "Polly
wants a cracker."
"I know you do," said her mistress, "and that is
A SHOWER OF RICE.
451
all you do want," upon which the mortified bird
thrust her head under her wing and went to sleep.
"We're always giving people of fine manners credit
for a mind and conscience to match, and we make a
mistake almost every time we do it.
A young
woman of gentle birth and breeding may have per-
fectly correct ideas on all the little forms of polite
intercourse, yet show not a particle of sense or
human sympathy on any other subject. She would
never make the mistake of calling for soup twice, but
she'd let a sister woman starve in the street rather
than risk an offence to respectability by speaking to
her."
"I'm sure that isn't like Bertha Fay at all," said
Maggie, with a little indignation.
"I'm not talking about Bertha Fay," Miss Graham
replied, and at once began to defend her. "I don't
see any harm in her marrying Judge Foster if she
wants to."
"Don't you see any harm in her wanting to?"
"Not necessarily. On the contrary, I regard that
as a redeeming feature of the case. Sentiment is a
good thing in marriage, of course; but love is an en-
dowment, like any other qualification or talent. We
don't blame a woman because she can't sing like
Patti. Why should we blame her because she can't
love like Juliet?”
"Then you think it is right for a woman to marry
a man she doesn't love? "
66
Right is relative.”
“I wish you wouldn't talk like that," Maggie
452
A GIRL GRADUATE.
:
made answer, in a disappointed tone. "It confuses
me. I don't know what you mean."
"I mean it is foolish to judge a woman of the Hot
tentot tribe, who submits to being knocked down
with a club by the man who wants to marry her, by
the standards of to-day- not that those standards
are so much improved.
""
“Bertha is not a woman of the Hottentot tribe."
"No, she is Rector Fay's daughter.
pleased with the marriage, I've no doubt.
He will be
The judge
She is
gives good dinners, and the rector will make a very
nice papa-in-law. Your friend is a good girl, I dare
say," noting Maggie's downcast look, "but she is of
the kind that inevitably settles down in life.
too fond of the comfortable side of things.
ought to be more of her mother in her; but that's
the risk a woman runs in marrying, the risk of bring-
ing children into the world of the same disposition
and habits as the man she's disappointed in."
There
It was a warm, golden day in early November, with
a hint of the departed summer in the air, which
seemed to have lingered to give them its blessing,
when Henry Parsons and Maggie Dean stood up in
the little parlor to be married. John Norton per-
formed the ceremony. Thomas Dean sat near in his
wheeled chair, his wife standing at his side, and a
small company of friends ranged about the room.
Maggie knelt down at her father's side to receive his
kiss of benediction. There was a suspicious bright-
ness in her eyes, as friends crowded about to extend
A SHOWER OF RICE.
453
congratulations. Mrs. Dean escaped to the kitchen
as soon as possible, ostensibly to occupy herself in
material cares respecting the wedding breakfast, and
preparations for Maggie's departure on the noon
train, taking lengthened pains with the lunch-basket.
"I've put the cold chicken in a tin box,” she said
to Maggie, trying to speak in her usual brisk tones.
"I should think there was enough to last two days."
She would not look at her daughter, nervously fuss-
ing over the strap that secured the basket-cover.
"Yes, mother, that's all right." Maggie had run
away from her place at her husband's side to say
good-by to her mother here. She clasped her arms
about her and held her imprisoned.
"Oh, I don't believe I want to go after all," she
broke down, between a laugh and a sob, and hiding
her face on her mother's shoulder. The latter stood
quite erect, bent on not giving way, but winking hard
to keep back the tears.
"I know I've been a bad girl and made you lots of
trouble," she sobbed contritely.
"I wouldn't worry about it now," her mother said.
"Have you got the blanket-shawl?" she added a
moment after, pretending to arrange Maggie's collar,
and letting this little subterfuge serve as excuse for
keeping her arm about Maggie's neck.
"Yes, she's got the blanket-shawl," said Miss
Graham, speaking for the one addressed, who could
not trust her voice just then. She also had beat an
early retreat to the kitchen. She thought weddings
the most dismal affairs on earth.
A
454
A GIRL GRADUATE.
99
"But it won't be long before we see each other,'
Maggie said, lifting her head, and wiping away her
tears. "You and father are to come out to Dakota
to visit us - Henry says so."
66
"That settles it, I suppose," her mother replied,
though you can't expect the rest of us to think the
sun rises and sets with him, all in a minute.'
""
Maggie laughed, and went back to her father. She
did not try to restrain her tears here, as she knelt
down at his side to receive his parting kiss, and felt
his arms about her. The scene moved all present.
"Be good to her," the old man said, in trembling
tones, to the young husband standing near and wait-
ing to receive his own. "She's the best little girl in
the world."
Henry Parsons promised, but with the vaguest un-
derstanding of the reason for such a request, or of the
general scene around him. A wedding-day brings
strange revelations. A man never feels himself of
so little personal account as on the day of his mar-
riage, when he seems a mere perfunctory device for
carrying on an affair that cannot well go on without
him, but in which his part is otherwise of little inter-
est or importance. Parsons had looked forward to
this day as one of crowning blessing and triumph, but
now it seemed one of universal grief and desolation,
and himself the luckless cause. He felt more like a
marauding thief than a victorious lover when he saw
Maggie's tears, and heard the lamentations of her
friends over her departure. It seemed as if he
should never be through these interminable tear
A SHOWER OF RICE.
455
ful leave-takings, but at last he had her beside him
in the carriage, flushed, tearful and smiling. Her
young friends stood grouped about, armed with all
the old slippers they could find to throw after them.
A shower of rice rattled on the carriage-top over their
heads. By accident, or some sly contrivance of the
bridegroom's, they were to ride to the station alone.
The driver gathered up his reins, and, just as the
horses moved, the first slipper was thrown, a soiled,
useless thing, which flew through the carriage window
and dropped on the seat opposite them. Maggie took
up the battered little shoe and examined it.
"How strange!" she said, turning to her husband.
“It is one of the same pair."
"The same pair?"
"That I had on the night of the class-reception."
A ray of recollection shot across his face. He took
the slipper from her, and, after looking at it a moment,
put it carefully in an inside pocket. Something in
this action, at once grave and tender, touched Maggie.
"Oh, I was very bad to you in those days," she
said, leaning towards him. He bent and placed the
seal of forgiveness on her lips, and would have re-
peated it, but she checked him, drawing herself dec-
orously back into the corner of the carriage.
"I will tell you something," she said, a demure
expression coming into her face. "If-if you had
spoken then, I should not have said 'no' - perhaps."
"That was what I was afraid of," he replied, with
a mischievous smile.
"Oh, indeed!" throwing herself back on the cush-
456
A GIRL GRADUATE.
ioned seat.
"How long ago that time seems,” she
added, reflectively, a moment after. "No, short.
Which is it?" laughing.
"Short, now that it is over with," he answered.
"Yes. How strange it is that unhappiness seems
never to have been, when once we have escaped it,
so unreal! - One wonders what has become of it.”
"It has sunk downwards to nourish the roots, like
yesterday's rain, which we see no signs of to-day, ex-
cept in a bluer sky and fresher landscape."
"I call that rather poetical," said Maggie.
"Oh, I'm a poet. Haven't I been living in Laura's
vicinity for a month, and wasn't that all Petrarch re-
quired?" She encouraged this with a smile.
"I am not only a poet, but an artist. All I require
is that Monna Lisa should consent to sit for her por-
trait. Or, if you prefer, I will turn orator like Peri-
cles, if you will consent to play the part of Aspasia
and the audience.”
"Dear me!" Maggie murmured, "I should think I
had married a distinguished character.”
"Oh, I feel myself the finest fellow in the world,"
with a joyous accent.
"I'm glad you didn't add Dante to the rest. I
don't think I would make a good Beatrice. I'm not
dead."
66
"No, we're alive, we're alive!" he cried, seizing
her hand. "The whole earth is ours, though at
present we shall occupy only a small corner in
Dakota. Here we are!" as the driver drew the
horses to a sudden halt. "Will you get out of
A SHOWER OF RICE.
457
the carriage, Mrs. Laura de Sade, Heloise Abelard,
Vittoria Angelo Maggie Parsons?" He empha-
sized the last with a triumphant accent, bending for-
ward to print a husbandly salute on her lips; just as
the driver, jumping down from his seat, with what
Maggie thought unnecessary haste, opened the door
for them, keeping his eyes discreetly on the ground.
On board the train, Maggie looked out of the win-
dow, but could scarcely see the little house on the hill
for the tears. She kept her eyes fixed on the landscape
as long as she could recognize a single feature of it;
then, when all the old familiar landmarks were passed,
turned to meet the waiting look of her husband. It
was true, then! They were married. It was they
two, and together now, for better, for worse; and the
swift rushing train bore them onwards.
Miss Graham ate her solitary supper as usual, then
sat out the twilight in reflections on the events of the
day, and attendant thoughts.
99
'It's queer the way those girls have turned out,'
she said to herself, "though I don't know why I
should call it queer, either, just because their father
was a working-man, who never had a chance to profit
by the advantages he took pains his children should
get the benefit of. Helen has married a minister;
though I don't care half as much about his being
a minister as I do about his being John Norton.
There's a prospect of his being called to Kansas City.
He's sure to make a success, wherever he is, and to
deserve it; and Helen Dean is a woman that can fill
any place that's offered her. Henry Parsons is one
458
A GIRL GRADUATE.
of the rising young men of the Northwest, they say.
I suppose, now that Dakota is coming in, she'll send
him to Congress. The papers will talk about him as
one of our self-made men, and print accounts of
Maggie's receptions. On the other hand, Judge Fos-
ter's son ran away with his father's cook. So much
for the things called 'class' and 'class distinction' in
this blessed, absurd old republic of ours." Having
thus settled her views on the subject, she rose and
went over to the parrot's cage.
ness.
"She's gone, Polly," she said, with a touch of sad-
"There won't be any one to tease or make fun
of you any more. I liked her better than I thought
I should, at first, and so, I guess, did you."
The creature thus addressed pulled its head from
its wing to give a melancholy squawk, and disconso-
lately tucked it back again.
Miss Graham lit the lamp and sat down to her
book. Outside, the stars came out and covered the
little village with their tender light. They looked
down on the brave and kindly spinster, sitting by her
lonely fireside, and blessed the goodness that tried to
hide itself from sight beneath a harsh and battered
exterior. They shone, with soft radiance, into the
bedroom where Laura Danvers was absorbed in
daughterly cares for the mother growing slowly
weaker, from some obscure cause, day by day; and
downstairs in the library, where Sidney Gale was
discussing with his uncle the feasibility of a trip
through the Southern States in the interests of the
leather trade. They looked in at the rectory, where
1
A SHOWER OF RICE.
459
the rector sat in slippered ease in his study, reading
a volume of Balzac; his wife had gone out to see a
sick child in the parish. They shed soft radiance on
the little cottage across the railroad, where Thomas
Dean and his wife sat alone. Both children were
gone now. They must learn to be sufficient to each
other again, as they had been in the early married
days. They should often be lonely, but they need
not be unhappy. Each day would bring its own task
and fresh experience, and there would be the chil-
dren's letters to look forward to. When the hour of
nine struck, Mrs. Dean wound the clock. A few
moments after, the lights were extinguished, and the
little house on the hill stood in dark and peaceful
stillness, wrapped in the safe protecting arms of night.
JAN A 1018
*

my=
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 05110 1692
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD

יך