She was quite determined to marry someone, though, and to marry soon. She couldn’t see any other end to her miseries and her loneliness. She realised that under the present circumstances she was not at all likely to meet anyone marriageable; she could not, like Frankie, roam the world to find a man; she had to use more subtle and more difficult means. And, actually, alone and unaided, the indomitable little thing thought of a way——
III
It was difficult to find a pretext for getting into the village that day. It was not her regular day, nothing was really needed, and no mail expected. Her grandmother was a little annoyed at such obstinacy.
“I can’t see,” she protested, “why on earth you want to go gadding off again to-day, with so much to be done.”
“I’ve seen to everything,” Minnie answered, and it was true.
“You’ll have to go in on Saturday,” the old lady reminded her.
“I need the wire,” said Minnie, calmly. (Chicken wire being the pretext.)
The old lady argued that she could wait. Minnie wished to know what was to be gained by waiting: she had any number of excellent reasons for not waiting. In the end she went out to harness Bess, with secret triumph, knowing that she had disarmed all her grandmother’s suspicions, and wouldn’t need to make explanations when she returned home.
She drove off in the buggy, sitting very straight, with a full sense of her dignity as a young lady of fine old family. It never occurred to her that she was in the least ridiculous. She was not physically vain, but she did consider herself impressive, aristocratic, and it would have been a cruel shock to her to know that the cultured spinster, Miss Vanderhof, used to laugh when she saw her driving by, and say to her mother, “There goes Miss Quixote!”
Penniless and proud Minnie was, but farther than that the simile would not hold. No one less likely than she to tilt against windmills, no one less sympathetic toward a lost cause.