“I have a letter here,” he said, “from one of the directors of a little school near Wentworth, in the mining district. He wants me to send him a teacher. Do you think you would care for the place?”
Miss Andrews gasped. She had not thought of leaving home. Yet she could do even that, if need be.
“I think I should be very glad to have the place,” she said. “Do you know anything about it, sir?”
He shook his head.
“Very little. I do not imagine the region is attractive, but the salary is fair, and the director who has written me this letter, and who seems to be a competent man, will board you without extra expense. Think it over and let me know your decision to-morrow.”
There was a very tearful interview between mother and daughter that night, but it was evident to both of them that the place must be accepted.
“If I could only go with you,” said her mother, at last. But Bessie silenced her with an imperative little gesture.
“Absurd!” she cried. “Do you think I would let you go with me into that wilderness, little mother? Besides,” she added, laughing, “I doubt very much if the director would consent to board the whole family. My one appetite may appal him and make him repent his bargain. And I shall not be gone very long—only until June.”
So it was settled, and the next day the superintendent formally recommended Miss Elizabeth Andrews as the teacher for the Wentworth school. In due time came the reply, directing her to report for duty at once, and she arrived at her journey’s end one bright day in late September.
She had determined from the first to make the people love her, but she found them another race from the genial, cultured, open-hearted Virginians who live along the James. Years of labor in the mines had marred their brains no less than their bodies; both, shut out from God’s pure air, and blue sky, and beautiful, green-clad world, grew crooked and misshapen, just as everything must do that has life in it.