One week from that day Selina Wistar arriving at her own gate at dusk from one direction, she had walked home from the office of the Board of Education in truth, to avoid getting there any sooner than she had to, met Miss Emma McRanney arriving from the other direction.
If one did not fear conveying the impression that Selina was fast lapsing into an eighteenth century heroine so far as weeping goes, it could be mentioned there was that about her face, despite the dusk, which showed she had been crying. Just a preparatory cry, perhaps, of a scalding tear or two, that could be permitted as she hurried along in the dusk, and would not be noticed—an abeyant tear as it were, pending the unrestrained flow that would come when seclusion and her own room were reached.
"Well, Selina," from Miss Emma, cheerfully, "it's all over for me. I've just been by the school office to get my report. I'm a type-setter who knows her job and is doomed to stick at it. What—what? Don't tell me you've gone and failed, too?"
"Oh, Miss Emma——"
"Now, Selina, don't tell me a further thing, don't tell me you fell down in your own specialties——"
"Miss Emma——"
"Well, well, now that's exactly what I was afraid I'd do and that I did, but I'd said from the start they were my weaknesses."
Selina was crying bitterly.
"My child," from Miss Emma, "it isn't worth it. You've gained enough in other things to make up for the lost certificate. And as for me, I've something that will comfort you, that I've known for two days. It made my middle-aged blood so hot I didn't know if I'd take the place if I could get it. It's almost as despicable a thing to be a woman, as I discovered it was to be an orphan, Selina, and very seldom more remunerative to the individual. At the last meeting of the board out at the Institute, they agreed, to a man, in giving this place to a woman, that it wasn't worth as much, and reduced the salary to exactly what I'm getting now. They did the same thing when they gave me my present job as type-setter. No, I won't come in, thank you. I've got to get on home. One thing I'm as adamant about. I can't feel those blind babies would have missed that Latin and algebra in me, and I've been hungry to teach 'em ever since I've been there. Good night! I'm coming around some evening soon, with Tuttle. We've a date, so it's not good-bye."
Whereupon Selina fled into the house and up to her room, and although, this time, it was an absolutely fresh marseilles spread, put on clean that morning, flung herself upon it and cried and cried and cried bitterly.