It was with great joy she once came home to say she had got the prize for these same home-lessons, and her greatest pride was that half the glory of it all was father’s. And he was just as pleased. Poor man! he didn’t get much success, so who could grudge him that? And he went to see her get it, though he didn’t often go to that kind of thing; and she had been so very nervous for fear she should make a mistake in going up and so make him ashamed of her. But the gentleman who gave the prizes had patted her ever so kindly on the head and he said he thought the home-lesson prize the best prize of the lot, for it showed the people at home took interest in the children’s work.
After that the children at the school wrote an Essay on Kindness to Animals for a prize given by the well-known Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Naturally Deborah wrote one too. And the farmer put himself out greatly to gather together material for her to write upon. He looked up anecdotes, and told her some of his own personal experiences. And who could have had more personal experience than he? Why, he had been one of the best drivers in the country round, and the horses just seemed to know when he held the reins, and curved their necks and champed their bits accordingly.
But no, there was no prize gained for that; the solitary prize they gained between them was that little book for home-lessons. He was disappointed, though he never admitted to it. However, he took her face in his two hands and said,—
“Never mind, we’ll try again some other time.”
He had arranged that she and Maggie should be teachers, and because she had perfect trust in him she thought that teaching was the finest thing in life. Besides, he and she had arranged that when she grew up and he was getting old (she could never bear to think of that, though) they were going to live together.
“I’ll make him so really happy,” she used to say to herself, “that he won’t know he is not walking on velvet carpets all the while,” and she meant it.
Matrimony had no attractions for Deborah.
“How anybody can go and live with a strange man they haven’t known all their lives I don’t know,” she used to ponder occasionally. And she used to sigh.
“I expect it’s because their fathers are not half so good as mine. I never met anybody, not anybody, half so perfect.”