"Well, she is good-looking enough," agreed Granville, with
unreasoning jealousy. He had not heard of Ellen's good fortune. His
mother had not told him. She was a tenderly sentimental woman, and
had always had her fancies with regard to her son and Ellen
Brewster. When she heard the news she reflected that it would
perhaps remove the girl from her boy immeasurably, that he would be
pained, so she said nothing. Every night when he came home she had
watched his face to see if he had heard.
Now Ellen told him. "You know what Miss Cynthia Lennox is going to
do for me," she said, abruptly, almost boastfully, she was so eager
in her partisanship of Cynthia.
Granville looked at her blankly. They were coming into the crowded,
brilliantly lighted main street of the city, and their two faces
were quite plain to each other's eyes.
"No, I don't," said he. "What is it, Ellen?"
"She is going to send me to Vassar College."
Granville's face whitened perceptibly. There was a queer sound in
his throat.
"To Vassar College!" he repeated.
"Yes, to Vassar College. Then I shall be able to get a good school,
and teach, and help father and mother."
Granville continued to look at her, and suddenly an intense pity
sprang into life in the girl's heart. She felt as if she were
looking at some poor little child, instead of a stalwart young man.
"Don't look so, Granville," she said, softly.
"Of course I am glad at any good fortune which can come to you,
Ellen," Granville said then, huskily. His lips quivered a little,
but his eyes on her face were brave and faithful. Suddenly Ellen
seemed to see in this young man a counterpart of her own father.
Granville had a fine, high forehead and contemplative outlook. He
had been a good scholar. Many said that it was a pity he had to
leave school and go to work. It had been the same with her father.
Andrew had always looked immeasurably above his labor. She seemed to
see Granville Joy in the future just such a man, a finer animal
harnessed to the task of a lower, and harnessed in part by his own
loving faithfulness towards others. Ellen had often reflected that,
if it hadn't been for her and her mother, her father would not have
been obliged to work so hard. Now in Granville she saw another man
whom love would hold to the ploughshare. A great impulse of loyalty
as towards her own came over her.
"It won't make any difference between me and my old friends if I do
go to Vassar College," she said, without reflecting on the dangerous
encouragement of it.
"You can't get into another track of life without its making a
difference," returned Granville, soberly. "But I am glad. God knows
I'm glad, Ellen. I dare say it is better for you than if--" He
stopped then and seemed all at once to see projected on his mirror
of the future this dainty, exquisite girl, with her fine intellect,
dragging about a poor house, with wailing children in arm and at
heel, and suddenly a great courage of renunciation came over him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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