“Well, you can in a year more,” Mrs. Post told her cheerfully. “It’s a noble calling.”
“I shall hate it all the same,” declared the Mystery fiercely.
“Oh, no, you won’t, child,” Mrs. Post told her, patting her shoulder gently. “You mustn’t quarrel with your bread and butter. Who sends you to Harding?”
“A woman I worked for once at home pays part of my expenses. I shall return it all as soon as I can. That’s all I shall have to work for now,” she added bitterly, “except bread and butter. My grandmother died when I was a freshman.”
“Just let me read you the last letter I had from my daughter, who is a nurse,” Mrs. Post would say at this stage of the Mystery’s confidences. “Or no,” after a minute’s vain search for her reading glasses, “you read it to me, dear.”
The daughter who was a nurse was a cheerful, placid creature, with a simple, optimistic belief in the joy of life and the nobility of her profession. The Mystery enjoyed the letters in spite of herself, and was divided between contempt and envy of the writer.
One night the Mystery crept shamefacedly down from her lonely tower just to kiss Mrs. Post good-night. She found that good lady in a state of joyous excitement over the engagement of the daughter who was a stenographer.
“She is the oldest of the family,” she explained. “She’s helped me, and helped keep the other girls in school, and given Bella nearly all the money she needed for her nurse’s course. She’s worked hard, and she has never complained. Now I hope she can have a nice easy time.”
“So do I,” said the Mystery heartily. “And, Mrs. Post, I’m going to try not to complain and not to hate so many people and things. Maybe I can find a bright side to life if I try. I guess you think I’m a grumbler, but I’ve had a lot to make me one.”
“I know you have, dear,” Mrs. Post told her soothingly.