"You can influence the Amelias—but within certain limitations. As for making them see things in the sane way—the thing isn't humanly possible. Do your best with them, but don't take their absurdities too seriously."
In time Belinda had learned that her employer's philosophy was wise, though it did not altogether agree with certain theories set forth in the school prospectus; so the funeral problem did not distress her. It was only one phase of a monumental sentimentality and it would pass as a host of other phases quite as foolish had passed.
The girls gathered up their writing materials as the retiring bell rang, but Amelia lingered for a private word with her teacher.
"Miss Carewe," she said, as the last petticoat whisked down the stairs, "I wish you'd think of something nice to put on my tombstone. You know such a lot about poetry and things of that kind. I've thought and thought, and I went through a whole book of Bible verses, and that Dictionary of Familiar Quotations down in the library, but I couldn't find a single thing that really suited me—and then the ones I did like best seemed sort of conceited for me to pick out. Now, if you'd select something nice and pathetic and complimentary, I could just say, in my will, that you wanted me to have that epitaph and that I had promised you I would."
She checked her eloquence, and waited in the hall until the teacher had turned out the school-room lights and joined her; then the tide of prattle swept on.
"Do you know, Miss Carewe, I'd simply love to be buried in that Protestant cemetery in Rome—the one where Sheets and Kelly are buried."
"Keats and Shelley," corrected the teacher of English literature, with lively horror written on her face.
"Oh, was it that way? Well, anyway, the men who wrote Deserted Village and Childe Harold and the other things. You told us all about the graveyard in literature class, and it sounded so perfectly lovely and romantic, with the big Roman wall, and old what's-his-name's pyramid, and daisies and violets and things running all over everything—and that epitaph on Keats' stone was simply splendid—something about his name being made out of water, wasn't it? I don't remember it exactly, but I just loved it. It was so sort of discouraged and blue and mournful. We girls talked about it that night and we all cried like everything over the poor fellow—only Blanche said she did wish his father hadn't been a butcher. You know Blanche is awfully cranky about families, because her mother was a Lee of Virginia and her aunt married a Randolph. It was awfully sad anyway, even if his father was a butcher, and that epitaph was lovely. I do wish I could think of something as good as that for myself. You'll try, won't you, Miss Carewe? Good-night."
"Good-night," replied Belinda in smothered tones, as she closed her bedroom door. There are times when the Youngest Teacher's sense of humour and her dignity meet in mortal combat, and she felt that one of the times was close at hand.
She had rather fancied that talk of hers about Keats, and had been flattered by the sympathetic interest displayed by even the most shallow members of the class. She sighed in the midst of her laughter—if only one could make even the Amelias understand world beauty and world pathos!—but the laughter triumphed. "Sheets and Kelly" could not be viewed seriously.