"Still, it seems to me, Mrs. Williams was right," from little Judy here in the front room. "You ought to have investigated; you should have known for yourself. Somehow girls and women never seem to know for themselves. I wonder why?"
Mrs. Wistar's voice murmuring defensively came in from the next room. "I hardly follow you, Mr. Wistar! I'm sure it was harder on me than on Selina to have her so disappointed. No girl was ever more shielded than she has been from all possible disappointments, and such things, up to now, nor spared where it was possible to spare her!"
The murmuring voice in reply came from Auntie. "My father's mother with her eight children followed her husband, she by wagon, he on horseback, over the old wilderness road to settle here where this town is now. She learned to use a gun and an axe as well as she used a spinning wheel, because she had to. She bore him seven more children after they were here. Nobody spared women or children then. Maybe it's been our mistake to spare her too much, Lavinia."
CHAPTER SIX
There are Olympians in each group of us, and Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle not only was of the Olympians in Selina's community, but was held by some to be the Olympian. Such is the magic of pre-eminence the name Tuttle sounded chaste and euphonious to the ear.
Selina's aunt and this lady who had gone to school together and were old friends, met down street. If the weakness of Mrs. Tuttle, who was an august but kindly soul, lay in a palpable enjoyment in the overdressing of her large person, her virtues lay in a well-intentioned heart. Though the details of the meeting between these two ladies were not all given to Selina, what happened at the underwear counter of the drygoods store where they met, was this:
"Selina is teaching, Emmeline, teaching in a private way," Auntie told Mrs. Tuttle. "It does not pay, but it is an opening wedge," an explanation she made everybody.
"You mean to say, Ann Eliza Wistar, that Robert's child is old enough for that! Her name, Selina, is for your mother, I remember. And a mighty capable and resolute woman she is named for. That stock in our mothers one generation removed from pioneer blood and bone, was fine stock, Ann Eliza. How is Lavinia taking the child's doing it?"