"Wait," the Other Girl said quickly, "I hate to waste a minute, but
I've got to say something. I want you to know what it may mean if you
do this for me. It may mean luxuries for my sick mother and--a chance
for my little 'Tiny Tim.' Do you know, my teachers said if I could
only keep on I might get a place to teach. Think of it! Do you know,
some doctors told mother once that there was a little chance of
straightening Timmie's bad leg, if we had the money. Oh, do you know
this _may_ mean things like that! Do you think I'm not thankful to
you?"
The impetuous words flowed out in a hurried stream, and the eyes of
the Other Girl, as they looked into Glory's, shone through a dazzle
of happy tears. For a moment after the eager voice ceased neither
girl made a sound. Then it was Glory who spoke.
"Why!" she cried with a long breath, "Why, I didn't know it could
mean anything like that! I thought it would just mean getting a
little learning. I didn't know there were things like that at the
other end of it."
Glory had lived a little less than sixteen years, but they had been
"different" from the years the Other Girl had lived. Aunt Hope had
been all the suffering she had ever seen--Aunt Hope, smiling and
brave, on her silken pillows. Until that sad little story the other
night, she had scarcely connected anything sorrowful or hard to bear
with Aunt Hope.
The beautiful autumn weeks multiplied to months, and Glory's plan
prospered thriftily. The lessons went on steadily through the morning
and afternoon rides. The Other Girl's face was set toward a possible,
splendid time to come; Glory's was set toward patience and
gentleness. For it was not always easy to give up the hour and a half
each day to the distasteful work that she so cordially hated. At
first, I mean; strangely enough, after a while things changed. Glory
woke up one day to find herself keenly interested in a knotty
problem. She could hardly wait to get her head beside the Other
Girl's, to see if together they could not solve it.
"Think of it, auntie! Is it me, or am I somebody else?" she laughed,
hurrying in to kiss Aunt Hope good-by. "Think of _me_ in a hurry to
get an answer to a problem!"
"Yes, it's you, dear. It's Glory Glorified!" laughed back the sweet
voice. Then she drew the girl's bright head down beside her. "It's
gone, dear. The Ambition out of my heart. It's passed to somebody
else--to you, I think, Glory--yes, I'm confident! You've got it this
minute!"
And Glory understood. She went away wondering if it could be true
that she, Gloria Wetherell, had a real ambition in life.
"Auntie hasn't called me Disappointment for a long time," she mused
happily, as she sped down the frosty street with the nip of keen air
on her cheeks and the tonic of it in her lungs. Her mind hurried back
to the knotty problem. She and the Other Girl were still at work on
it that night, coming home. It happened that it had not been taken up
in the recitation that day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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