CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Miss McRanney proved worth while enough, and rather good fun if Selina would have allowed this. She arrived on the appointed evening with a satchel of schoolbooks and an avowed poor opinion of examinations as tests of teachers. She followed Selina to the dining-room where they were to work, and where Auntie was lingering to say howdy, and as she emptied the satchel of the textbooks, emptied her mind of this opinion.
"Drat such a test, it's all wrong. What life asks teachers to put into their pupils, or get out of them, as you prefer it, is character. To take a wild flight into the fanciful, and I'm not strong there, one might call it the universal language recognized everywhere and anywhere, whether in a Choctaw or a Charlemagne. Right now I couldn't pass the examination that gave me that valedictory at eighteen, no, Miss Ann Eliza, and don't look so distressed about it, not if Mazeppa's ride in duplicate for me was the consequence of failing. Whereas any character I've got of my own to help a child to his, I've found since then."
"Any character you've got, Emma?" from Auntie indignantly. "And starting out again at forty?" The wild daring of this act, as she saw it, seemed to fascinate Auntie.
"Well," said Miss Emma, "he must needs go whom the devil doth drive, my devil having been necessity. I've never had a man to rest back on, or I probably would have done so. However we're keeping Selina waiting. The digressions of middle age are mighty tiresome, aren't they, Selina? Well, don't forget they are when you get there. Since I've got to pass this examination I suppose we'd better get to work, especially in your specialties, algebra and Latin, that are my pitfalls."
The next lesson came on a Monday evening and Miss Emma had been at church the day before. "There's many a thing to amuse a body, Selina," she said good-humoredly as she took off her wraps. "I earn my way and occupy my small place in the army of producers. The rest of the women in that congregation of ours live sweetly and unconcernedly upon the general store that other people produce. And yet, if their unfailing and admirably ordered patronage of me could overwhelm, I'd long ago have been washed away in the flood."
Auntie's voice expostulating, came in from the next room where she was reading the paper laid down by Papa. "Why Emma——"
"Here, keep out of this, Miss Aunt Eliza. I'm talking to the next generation. I want to point out a few things to it that may make the way easier for its journeying. Selina, if you're going to teach, come on along with me and take this examination and get your certificate. You've got something to show then, something to go on so long as the public demands certificates."
Selina had been thinking about this herself, and wishing she'd done it sooner. If the suggestion had come from anyone but Miss Emma she'd have taken it. As it was——