On Monday the real work of school began. Besides the boarding scholars,
was a day-school of the young ladies and larger girls, who were either
sent away or went to Aldred House. There was an excellent school for the
little ones, and a very good public school, but Westchester did not take
cordially to this except for the boys.
Two of the teachers had arrived on Saturday evening. Madame Meran, the
French teacher, who also gave music lessons to the younger pupils, and
Miss Lane, who taught Latin and German to the few who desired it, and
had dreams of college life. Mrs. Aldred made no specialty of this, but
some of the pupils insisted on remaining until that time. There were two
divisions in the senior class, two in the junior. Helen was glad that
Daisy Bell was in the B. division. She was not as gay as Roxy Mays, but
there was a quality of tenderness in her that was very attractive.
She was not quite sure that she would desire to make a warm friend of
Miss Mays though on Friday evening her whole heart had gone out to her.
She could turn any subject into ridicule so easily, she could seize on
small foibles and distort them with such a winsome grace that they were
amusing at the time, but when one thought them over afterward one saw
the little stings that were left behind.
It was so different from anything Helen had dreamed of. At first she
thought she would have been happier going to the Hope High School and
working her way through. There was a feeling that she did not truly and
honestly belong in this circle of girls, many of whom had rich fathers
and luxurious homes; and she wondered if some day she would come to have
the careworn and unsatisfied look that Miss Lane had. Miss Lane had
taught ten years, beginning when she was nineteen. So she was
twenty-nine.
"And I do not believe she has ever had a lover," said Miss Mays. "She
looks so."
"What kind of a look is that?" questioned someone.
"Why that discontented, hungry expression, that curious alertness, as if
you were looking for something that had never come, and you were afraid
never would. Girls, if I had to live until I was twenty-nine
unmarried----"
"Well, what then?" queried three or four voices.
"I'd find some way of finishing it out at twenty-five."
"Oh, you couldn't," cried Daisy, shocked.
"Well, there are sisterhoods in churches and they are very respectable.
My great-aunt Roxalana has been married twice, both times to rich men.
She's eighty-six now and looks like a fright, though it is said she was
a very pretty young woman. It's safe to say that when your compeers are
all dead. Oh, I do hope I will never outlive my beauty."
They all laughed at that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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