She was not in "our set." She
was poor, and studious, and obedient, yet a friendship had sprung up
between her and me, and I was moved to forgive her the, in many respects,
grovelling tendencies of her nature. I even ascended occasionally to her
room on the fourth floor to shock her with my sentiments, when there was
nothing livelier going on.
She wrote:--
"MY DEAR S----: Are you still perfectly happy, as you used to try to
have me think you were always--the old restlessness, the better
longings unsatisfied, do they never come up again? [That was Mary's
insidious way of stating a difficulty.] Don't you believe you would
be happier to _do_ something in real earnest? Something for people
_outside_, I mean. [I flushed a little at that. An insinuation of
that sort can't be put too delicately.] I have tried to imagine how
the proposal I am going to make will strike you--but never mind. I
am teaching, you know, in Kedarville. I leave here, at the close of
the term, for another field of labor, and now I want you to apply
for the Kedarville school. Yes, it is a remote, poverty-stricken
place. It contains no society, no church, no library, not even a
little country store! It would seem to you, I dare say, like going
back to the half-barbarous conditions of life.
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