Life in the Levis house, tolerable during the remaining weeks of the summer and early fall when there was much to be done out of doors, assumed a more complex character when it was confined entirely to the kitchen. Millie had believed that she desired escape from home partly for the sake of freedom from continual chattering; apparently, however, it was merely the silence of others which she desired. She now became loquacious; Ellen, she discovered with amusement, knew nothing; that is, she knew nothing of the private affairs of her neighbors, of strange old scandals, of recent deeds of foolishness and sin. Millie knew stories about all the people on the surrounding farms, about all the people along the road to the Kloster; indeed, about the ancient inhabitants of the Kloster itself, those holy souls who had given up all the pleasures of the world for the sake of salvation. She described in detail the misdeeds of Brother Reith, who in the absence of his wife in the asylum was a rake of the first order. She had even a story about Mrs. Sassaman—did not Ellen know that! Millie laughed. Such proud aloofness as that of the Levises must have made life very dull.
"I don't believe that about Mrs. Sassaman," answered Ellen soberly. "My father would not have had her here to take care of us if she was not a good woman."
"I don't want to say anything against your father, but he had very free ideas."
"Not so free as that."
"Don't you believe that I tell you the truth?" demanded Millie.
"You must be mistaken." Ellen was pale and offended, but she was determined to give no offense.
On her first free afternoon she went to her room and opened her books. She remembered all that she had learned and it was still not too late to be educated. In the evening she heard Millie complain to Matthew of loneliness, and the next afternoon she took her books into the kitchen where the sight of them proved irritating. Millie stood no longer in awe of her superior education; she hated it; it seemed, in some dim, ominous, and inexplicable fashion, to threaten her.
"Matthew thinks learning is unnecessary beyond what we need for our every-day lives."
Ellen made no answer. Presently Millie came to believe that her growing annoyance with Ellen and her ways sprang from anxiety about her soul.
"I can't be here with you all the time without reminding you to make your peace with God."