mother will be over to see you as soon as she can. It was a mercy on my
part to insist she enter these two. Henry Revis is our doctor's son.
It'll take him off the street, as I pointed out to his father. His
mother also will be over to see you."
They went into the sewing-room, Mrs. Williams ahead, making the
introductions.
"Rupy and Willy and Henry and William, this is Miss Wistar, Miss Selina
Wistar, the young lady, the very lovely and kind young lady I think we
may say, who is coming every day to teach you. Rupy!"
And at this one of the two little boys seated at the lap-board,
partially desisted from his absorption with some crimson rose-hips and
looked up. The lap-board was strewn with stems and husks and some of
the rose-hip contents.
"Rupy," sharply, "are you quite sure they're _good_ to eat?"
"Aw, who's eatin' 'em?" said Rupy the sturdy, red-haired and freckled,
spewing out rose-hip fuzz along with disgust at woman's blindness and
interference in what she didn't understand. "I took 'em away f'om Willy
to bust 'em an' see what's in 'em. Mummer sent 'em over to the teacher."
"I'll bust some myse'f soon as he'll lemme," from Willy anxiously, not
quite so sturdy and with hair not quite so red and paler freckles.
"Rupy's the oldest," from Mrs. Williams as if it were apology and
accounted for the whole business. "Willy's his twin. William, you and
Henry come and speak to Miss Wistar."
* * * * *
Mrs. Williams had withdrawn. Selma's coat and hat were on the sofa in
the corner and she had taken the chair provided for her beside a small
table. Her color came and went, her hair shone with pale luster, her
manner was pretty and the collar and cuffs were becoming.
At desk, checker-board and lap-board her pupils sat before her and
gazed at her.
William was at the desk. He was very clean, very shining and very
gloomy. His head _was_ too large. It looked tired as from the carrying
of an overweight of suspicion. Patiently he eyed her and the whole
business about to be with distrust. In a curious way it warmed Selina's
heart, causing her to feel banded with William as against some outside
cunning force. It was as if she found a friend and ally here in William.
Rupy Dodd and Willy Dodd sat at the lap-board. As said before, they
had red hair and freckles wherever freckles supposedly might be. Rupy
having abandoned the rose-hips by request, looked alert and Willy, his
twin, looked at Rupy.
Henry at the checker-board was small and lean with a keen blue eye and
a keener air. Asked by Selina to tell her again what his name was he
gave it with briskness and every off-hand due, as Hennery. A minute
before she had heard this Henry sum her up to Rupy.
"Aw, she ain't a teacher, she's a girl."
And she had heard the contumely of Rupy's reply: "With molasses-candy
plaits round her head."
* * * * *
Selina in the chair before her class held a slate in her hand. She had
borrowed it from William and with a bit of chalk supplied her by Mrs.
Williams from the machine drawer, had made a certain symbol upon it.
This slate with the symbol in chalk upon it she now held up to the
class.
"This, William and Rupy and Willy and Henry," she said a little
tremulously, even while trying to make it sound firm, "_this is A._"
William looked tired with distrust of the whole doubtless tricky
business. He'd been fooled into this thing called life for a starter,
his manner seemed to say, and he'd be wary and watchful about the rest.
Let it be A, it was her business since she was claiming it was A, not
his.
Henry spoke disparagingly. "Pshaw, I know the whole durned business
from A to Izzard. It don't need any teacher to tell _me_ what's A."
Willy was peevish. But then, as everybody's manner of bearing with him
said, including his brother, what was he but a twin? "What's Izzard?"
from Willy, peevishly. "I know A. My Mummer, she taught us A. What you
meanin' by Izzard, Henry?"
But Rupy the flame-headed, spewing some more just-discovered rose-hip
fuzz out his mouth through a gap made by two missing incisors, here
spread himself across the lap-board and asked a question. Asked it as
one asked a question he long has wanted to know. Asked it in faith with
a demanding eye, as one who means to bite into more fruits in life than
mere rose-hips and reveal their hearts, or know the reason.
"_Why's it A?_"
And the girl-teacher, this Selina, looked back at him. Why was it A,
indeed? Rupy of this decade was asking as Juliette of the last decade
had done. And _Juliette_ had had no answer.
William spoke up out of what one gathered was the gloom of his own
experience, addressing himself to Rupy. "She'll tell you it's because
God says so. Eve'ybody tells you that."
Rupy flung himself back off the lap-board against his chair with the
air of one who had her. "Why's it A?" he repeated.
Henry, small, lean, knowing, never had remitted his shrewd gaze fixed
appraisingly upon her. Suddenly now he relaxed and his manner changed
from challenging to protective, from aggressive to benignant. "Aw, gwan
an' say it out. Don't you be afraid. You say what you wanter say about
why it's A."
For Henry had read her and discovered her. _She didn't know why it was
A!_
And Selina drawing enlightenment from Henry upon the wise path to
tread, said what she wanted to say, just as he bade her do.
"I don't know why it's A. The first day I ever went to school we asked
why it was A, but nobody told us."
"An' you don't know yet?" from William with the triumph of the certain
if gloomy prognostigator.
Rupy seemed to feel that he had started all this and was responsible.
His air, too, like Henry's, had changed from the demanding and the
challenging to the protective. She was a girl, and she didn't know!
What further proof needed that she was here to be taken care of?
"Well, anyhow this one's A. Go on. The next one's B. We all know 'em."
Willy came to as though the burden of the proof suddenly was put upon
him.
"B bit it, C cut it, D dealt it----"
"Aw, Willy," from Rupy disgustedly, "you go on like a girl when she
thinks she knows it."
William emerged into an outraged being. "Don't go on like a girl. You
gimme back them rose-hips. They was mine to give the teacher."
"Well," grumbled Rupy as with one willing to take part of it back, "if,
'tain't like a girl, it's like a twin, then."
* * * * *
They knew their letters, they knew their numbers, up to ten at least,
they all had primers and had them with them, and proved to her they
knew cat, and rat, and mat, and hen, and pen and men, on the page.
Selina didn't believe, however, that any of them could read. As well
make a start somewhere and find out. She turned to a page well on in
the primer, a page she had met before in her day. She held it up to
them. It showed a benevolent bovine gazing downward at a frog on a
lily-pad.
"Everybody turn to this page. It's a fable and we'll start there."
They were on to her at once with contumely and derision, Rupy the
freckled, Henry the lean, William the tired because as now of the very
inadequateness of most creatures.
"Fable?" from Rupy. "What for's it any fable? What's a fable?"
pityingly.
"Aw, 'tain't no fable, can't you see it ain't?" from Henry in disgust.
From William with gloomy patience. "It's an ox. And the thing it's
talking to is a frog."
Willy bobbed up. He was nothing but a twin, poor soul! But even so,
_he'd_ show her! "O-x, ox, f-r-o-g, frog, p-r-i-m, prim, e-r, er,
primer."
"Aw, Willy," from Rupy in tones of even greater disgust. "Whut's the
matter with you? This here's _her_ school. Let her talk. It ain't
your'n."
For she was a girl! And discovered to be pretty! And twice proven under
test not to know! She was here to be taken care of and protected! What
further proofs of this were needed?
* * * * *
Mrs. Williams came out to the hall as Selina was leaving at noon. "I
hope you feel you got along fairly well? That your first morning gave
you encouragement?"
Selina hesitated. Her linen collar was a bit awry and the crown of
flaxen plaits about her head had sagged. "It's--it's different from
what I thought. I don't think I knew what little boys were like.
It's--it's interesting, and I dare say I'll like it. Little girls, as I
remember us, tried to think the way we were told to think. It's as if
little boys feel that's a reason for thinking the other way."
"I dare say," from Mrs. Williams absently. She wasn't following what
Selina had to say. But then Selina wasn't at all certain she was
following herself.
"I feel you're quite justified in coming to us now," Mrs. Williams was
saying. "It's a great relief to me that I succeeded in convincing two
mothers at least of how greatly it was to their advantage to send their
children over. You understand, of course, Selina, that Rupert and Willy
and Henry mean four dollars for you, the same as my William?"
It was what Selina had been anxious to know but had not quite liked to
ask.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Selina returned from her first morning's teaching, she had much
to tell. She almost felt she was growing sordid and mercenary herself.
"When I got to Mrs. Williams', Mamma, I found three other pupils
waiting for me."
"It's an ugly brick front, that house of the Williams', so tall and
spare," said her mother, not just grasping what was significant in the
information.
"Three more pupils it means, Mamma and Auntie, making _four_ in all."
"I'm sure I'm glad she proved as good as her word," said Auntie. "I
suppose because she needed the others to make up the class for her
own child, she made those mothers feel it was entirely her interest
in their children's welfare bringing it about. People always go down
before that sort of zeal for their benefit. That's Amelia McIntosh,
exactly!"
Selina tried again. She herself was tremendously excited. If when she
arrived at the Williams' and found those four wide-eyed little boys
awaiting her, her heart misgave her as to what she was going to do with
them, she had no intention of telling it at home, and if damage seemed
likely to be done at her novice hands to the innocent William and his
equally innocent companions, she was not thinking of that part of it at
all! What she was trying to make plain was of a different nature.
"Don't you realize what it means, Mamma? Four pupils at four dollars a
pupil! Think of that, Auntie!"
They saw the point at last and dropping their sewing in their laps, sat
up animated and excited.
"Four pupils at four dollars a pupil?" said Auntie. "That's how much
for a week's teaching, Lavinia?" Auntie always succumbed before figures.
"Four and four's eight, and eight's sixteen," said Mamma, dazzled, "and
multiply this sixteen by four again for a month's total--four t'm's six
is twenty-four, four t'm's one is four and two to carry, is--! Selina,
you must have a round-necked, real party dress now!" happily.
"And two to carry is what, Lavinia?" from Auntie anxiously. "Sixty-four
dollars?" in answer to her sister-in-law's triumphant reply. "I can't
believe it! Selina, you must have a hat with a soft feather, too!"
Selina was dazzled, too, but endeavoring to hold herself steady.
Fifteen dollars was the most she had had for her own at any one time in
her life. She had held on to it hoardingly, letting a dozen things go
by that she really wanted, to lose her head in the end and spend it for
a thing she didn't want at all as it proved. She was going to keep her
head and her dignity this time over this sudden wealth opening to her.
"I shall pay Aunt Viney from now on; that's to be my part," she
said with finality. "Remember that, please, Mamma, in making your
calculations."
"But nothing more," from Auntie.
"Not one thing more, other than for yourself," from Mamma, "and I shall
mention the matter to your father, now," happily, "there's nothing in
it for him to feel worried over now."
Her father spoke to Selina that evening, stopping her on her way up the
stairs as he came down.
"Your mother has told me about this teaching, since I got home," he
said. "Stop a moment, Selina."
He lifted her face by a hand placed softly beneath her chin as they
stood there on the steps. The refined, rather delicate face with the
close brown beard she perforce thus looked up into, was sensitive as
her own.
The eyes seemed to be regarding her as from a new viewpoint. His own
little daughter, this young person with the all too heavy flaxen plaits
and the dress-skirt down to her instep!
"Your mother assures me you chose to do this teaching yourself, Selina?
Am I to decry it, or applaud it?"
She was horribly embarrassed, not being accustomed to discuss her
affairs in this way with him, communications of an intimate nature
between them always being through her mother. The thing was to end
the interview as quickly as possible and get away from the disturbing
proximity.
"It's settled, Papa, so don't decry it," she spoke stiffly and even
while doing so was ashamed of it.
He was regarding her a little wistfully. "Your mother tells me,
Selina, that you will need a winter dress?" Was he groping, perhaps
sorrowfully, trying to find some point through which to reach her? "See
to it that it comes from me, will you, and that it is a nice one?"
Again she was ashamed, this time of the relief with which she fled from
his kiss and the touch of his hand on her shoulder.
Apparently there is everything in an undertaking being a success, even
when it is teaching for your living, and you a woman. Selina told
Juliette, what her four pupils were to bring her, and she told the
others, they who had been so plainly shocked and full of distress for
her, and they came hurrying over, filled with excitement and admiration
now.
It was the afternoon following Selina's second day of teaching. She
was in her own room which overlooked the backyard and Auntie's beds
of salvias and dahlias still braving the first light frosts. Now
Selina felt that her room didn't lack distinction. She would have
preferred a set of cottage furniture like Maud's, of course, white with
decalcomania decorations on it in flowers and landscapes, instead of
the despised mahogany set that had belonged to the grandmother she was
named for. Selina belonged to her own day and hour.
"Cottage furniture is adorable and mahogany relegated to attics and
junk shops," she once had said discontentedly to her mother.
Still, with her books and her pictures, a panel in oils done by Cousin
Anna, of cat-tails, and the companion to it in pond-lilies, and a
Japanese parasol over her mantelpiece, her room did not lack for
distinction.
She was looking over the first-reader books she had ordered for her
pupils, and wondering what she was to do with them, when there was
a tap at her door and Amanthus came in. Lashing the laughter of her
cheeks and eyes, and Amanthus did not often stop being enchanted for
side matters, this loveliest of creatures came hurrying to her and
kissed her.
"I've been wanting to tell you, Selina, that Tommy and Bliss and the
other boys think you're wonderful and a dear about teaching." Tommy
Bacon and Bliss were the quite especial two with Amanthus just now,
there never being less than two in her case. "But I came in now because
Juliette has told me! Think of you earning all that!"
Juliette, who had come with Amanthus and had lingered to speak with
Mrs. Wistar and Auntie in the front room, came flashing in here.
"Isn't Amanthus' new dress enchanting, Selina? Who but Mrs. Harrison
would have thought of fawn color and rose? I heard ribbon bows as
trimming were coming in, and I must say I like them. We've been
discussing you, Selina. Maudie says you didn't want to teach, and
that every step we take toward the thing we don't want to do, as you
did, strengthens our characters. She is choosing something for me to
take up, that I won't care for, because she says I'm volatile and
changeable. Think of you really earning all that, Selina!" The crimson
staining Juliette's cheeks was glorious!
"I'm not sure Maudie is such a safe one for you to follow, Judy,"
considered Selina, the fair-skinned. "You're not as volatile, if I know
what volatile is, as she is."
Amanthus turned away from the bureau where she had been fluffing her
sunny yellow hair, and came and sat down before the open coal fire with
the two. "Mamma says Maudie is laughable if she wasn't so masterful,
taking you all after strange gods. I asked her what strange gods meant,
and she laughed and told me I'd never need to find out."
"You won't, Amanthus," said little Judy omnisciently, with a nod of her
small dark head, "the rest of us, I kind of feel," with big solemnity,
"will go far." Then she took a lighter tone. "It's Maudie who's always
proposing something to the rest of us, but when you come to think
about it, we always fall in. There she is now, calling to your mother,
Selina, as she comes up the stairs. She said she'd be over."
Handsome Maud, bringing energy and unrest with her, burst forth with
her plaint before even she had found a seat, Selina vacating one of the
three chairs for her, and taking a place on the bed.
"It's giving me such concern, what I ought to be making of myself,
Selina, now you've set the way, I didn't sleep last night for
considering it. I said so to Papa, and he said 'stuff' which wasn't
polite. And anyway, I know I'm right; everyone should center on some
talent, only I can't decide on which. Think of the proved value of
yours!"
And here Adele came in. She had gone by for one and the other, and then
followed them here. If Juliette was flashing, and Amanthus enchanting,
and Maudie with her red-brown hair and red and white skin, undeniably
handsome, Adele, seemingly, should have been lovely. Her eyes were
dark, and her cheeks softly oval. But somehow she lacked what Maud
called the vital fire. Or was it confidence she lacked? She herself
explained it by saying she never was allowed by her family to respect
the things she had the slightest bent for doing.
As Adele came in now, her dark eyes looked their worry. She took the
place indicated beside Selina on the bed. "You're working for what
you'll get, Selina, giving something for something? It's just come to
me, thinking it over. It must be a self-respecting feeling it gives. It
makes me begin to wonder if I've really any right to my allowance from
Papa."
"While Selina's busy with her teaching, maybe it would be a good
thing for the rest of us to get together and keep up our German,"
burst forth Maud. "Oh, I know, Adele, you mean a different thing,
something highly moral and uncomfortable, but meanwhile let's be doing
_something_. It's inaction that's galling."
"You said the other day," from little Juliette, indignantly, "we'd get
a chart and find out something about the stars and astronomy. I went
and bought me a book!"
Amanthus, flower-like and lovely creature, looked from one to the other
of them as they talked. The wonder on her face and the bother in her
violet eyes made her sweet and irresistible.
"You're so queer," protestingly, "you Maudie and Adele, and yes,
Juliette, too. You do get so worked up. I don't see what it is you're
always thinking you're about. Selina needed the money. I don't see
what more there is to it than that. It's certainly fine she is going
to make all she is by teaching. And, Selina, I mustn't forget, Mamma
told me to give you her love and consummations, no, I guess I mean
congratulations." Amanthus was given to these lapses in her English.
"Are the rest of you going to stay longer? I've got to go."
When Culpepper came around a night later and heard the astounding news
of Selma's good fortune, he pretended to a loss of his usually sober
head.
"Come go to the theater with me to-night, Selina, to celebrate? That
is if your mother agrees? No, certainly I can't afford it. I see the
question in your accusing eyes, but you needn't rub it in that I'm a
plodding dependent and you're the opulent earner."
At the close of her first week at teaching William the gloomy and Rupy
and Willy and Henry, Selina did not bring home her expected sixteen
dollars. "It probably is customary to pay monthly. I didn't like to
ask," she told Mamma and Auntie. "Settle with Aunt Viney for me until I
get it, Mamma; she pays the rent for her room by the week, I know, and
I'll give it to you in a lump sum at the end of the month."
And when that time came, she did, a pale, incredulous, crushed Selina,
and fell weeping against Mamma's neck with a hand outstretched to be
cherished by Auntie.
"She said four dollars a pupil. I supposed she meant a week the
same as we pay Aunt Viney. I thought that was little enough. She is
amazed I could have dreamed of such a thing. She says I ought to have
known, that my common-sense should have told me, that I could have
investigated for myself. She meant four dollars a month for a pupil.
Education comes cheaper than cooks. The money from all four of them---
here it is." Selina stretched forth the other hand passionately. "It
will not quite pay Aunt Viney."
"She was a McIntosh, as your Aunt says. I never did think it was much
of an alliance for a Williams," from Mamma scathingly.
"I said from the start that boy William's head was too large" from
Auntie as one justified.
CHAPTER FIVE
That evening at the dinner table, Mamma looked around the castor and
spoke briskly to Papa, tall and slight gentleman that he was, with
temples hollowing a bit.
"We made a foolish miscalculation in the amount Selina is to receive
for her teaching. We women are poor arithmeticians. With her lack of
experience it is gratifying that she will be commanding the customary
price as it is."
By this Selina understood that her father was to be spared as much
of her disappointment as possible. She really owed this gentleman
something on account in this teaching business, if she were given to
considering money received from him after any such fashion. He had
smilingly, at her mother's request, advanced the amount needed for
books and other material for her teaching, and a second sum for carfare
to the Williams' in bad weather. But these transactions were not on the
mind of Selina at all. Just as the economic end rather than Aunt Viney
was the thing considered by Mamma in the readjustment of the family
wash, so Papa, as a source of supply was taken for granted by Selina.
It would not have occurred to her, nor yet to Mamma or Auntie, or to
any of the mothers and aunts and daughters whom they knew, that the sum
of her earnings was offset by the amount advanced for her equipping. On
the other hand Selina was loving, and quite understood that it should
be the feelings of her father she must spare.
[Illustration: "Mamma looked around the castor and spoke briskly."]
"The experience will mean everything," she claimed briskly and promptly
to her mother's cue, "I ought to be glad to teach for nothing, I
daresay, to get it."
Auntie looked alarmed at any such view of the matter. "I knew of an
apprentice in my young days, our gardener's son, bound out for the
experience in a rope-walk, who carried thirty-seven boils at one time
from the mildewed cornmeal they fed him. I don't approve of anyone
working for anybody for nothing. We're sure to undervalue what we don't
pay the price for. It's a poor plan."
"How you wander," from Mamma.
"Not from my point," from Auntie stoutly. "I've made it."
After dinner Juliette and Maud who lived next door to each other, and
Amanthus and Adele who lived at the opposite ends of the block, came
in in a body. It was a way the group had of getting together at one
house when there was nothing else especial on hand. They trooped gaily
in, dropping their wraps in the hall and coming into the parlor. No
more were they and Selina seated about the open grate fire and Auntie's
burnished brasses, and prepared to talk volubly, than Culpepper walked
in. He found a chair and joined the group.
"Judy and I," Maud was saying to Selina who was pale though nobody
noticed this, "saw you starting out this morning to your teaching. We
think if you'd coil your plaits round your head, instead of looping
them, you'd look older."
"If four infant pupils bring in one swollen fortune," speculated
Culpepper blandly, "how many fortunes, through how many infant pupils,
is one Selina, now she's started, likely to amass?"