Apparently there is everything in an undertaking being a success, even when it is teaching for your living, and you a woman. Selina told Juliette, what her four pupils were to bring her, and she told the others, they who had been so plainly shocked and full of distress for her, and they came hurrying over, filled with excitement and admiration now.
It was the afternoon following Selina's second day of teaching. She was in her own room which overlooked the backyard and Auntie's beds of salvias and dahlias still braving the first light frosts. Now Selina felt that her room didn't lack distinction. She would have preferred a set of cottage furniture like Maud's, of course, white with decalcomania decorations on it in flowers and landscapes, instead of the despised mahogany set that had belonged to the grandmother she was named for. Selina belonged to her own day and hour.
"Cottage furniture is adorable and mahogany relegated to attics and junk shops," she once had said discontentedly to her mother.
Still, with her books and her pictures, a panel in oils done by Cousin Anna, of cat-tails, and the companion to it in pond-lilies, and a Japanese parasol over her mantelpiece, her room did not lack for distinction.
She was looking over the first-reader books she had ordered for her pupils, and wondering what she was to do with them, when there was a tap at her door and Amanthus came in. Lashing the laughter of her cheeks and eyes, and Amanthus did not often stop being enchanted for side matters, this loveliest of creatures came hurrying to her and kissed her.
"I've been wanting to tell you, Selina, that Tommy and Bliss and the other boys think you're wonderful and a dear about teaching." Tommy Bacon and Bliss were the quite especial two with Amanthus just now, there never being less than two in her case. "But I came in now because Juliette has told me! Think of you earning all that!"
Juliette, who had come with Amanthus and had lingered to speak with Mrs. Wistar and Auntie in the front room, came flashing in here.
"Isn't Amanthus' new dress enchanting, Selina? Who but Mrs. Harrison would have thought of fawn color and rose? I heard ribbon bows as trimming were coming in, and I must say I like them. We've been discussing you, Selina. Maudie says you didn't want to teach, and that every step we take toward the thing we don't want to do, as you did, strengthens our characters. She is choosing something for me to take up, that I won't care for, because she says I'm volatile and changeable. Think of you really earning all that, Selina!" The crimson staining Juliette's cheeks was glorious!
"I'm not sure Maudie is such a safe one for you to follow, Judy," considered Selina, the fair-skinned. "You're not as volatile, if I know what volatile is, as she is."
Amanthus turned away from the bureau where she had been fluffing her sunny yellow hair, and came and sat down before the open coal fire with the two. "Mamma says Maudie is laughable if she wasn't so masterful, taking you all after strange gods. I asked her what strange gods meant, and she laughed and told me I'd never need to find out."