"Well, she feels it's a pity, and so do I, and so, I think, does Robert. Selina is pretty, Emmeline."
"H'm, I see. I remember now she is. I used to see her once a year at least at the dancing school balls. You send her to me, Ann Eliza, whenever an invitation comes to her from me this winter. No, better, now I come to think about it, you tell her I want her at my house to-morrow night. I'm having a musicale. I'll look out for her. Somewhere before nine o'clock."
Selina reached home that day in excellent spirits anyway. She had been teaching her class of four for two months now, and William had been embarrassingly slow starting at reading in his first reader. He seemed to feel he had enough of reading when he finished his primer. This morning Mrs. Williams had come to her in the sewing-room, with reassuring news.
"We find William has begun to read at last, Selina. Day before yesterday he couldn't, and last night he seized his book, when we urged him, and deliberately read his father a page about a baby robin, without a mistake. We think it's wonderful how it's come about all at once."
Selina thought so, too, but was none the less relieved for that. Not that she was not conscientious, for with the best will in the world she was applying the printed page to her four pupils and her pupils to the page, the moment of flux unfortunately being unpredictable but exceedingly reassuring when it came. Evidently there is more in the phrase "born teacher" than she had been aware of, and she grew a bit heady with the relief of this news.
And here when she reached home was the invitation from Mrs. Tuttle awaiting her! Honors were crowding her! She and Mamma and Auntie talked it over eagerly at the lunch table.
"There's no ease like that from going about to the best places," said Mamma. "I can't be too glad this has come just when it has. It defines Selina's position. I don't suppose," musingly, "Amelia Williams ever was asked to the Tuttle home in her life. The McIntoshes never were anybody. Not that I'd have you mention to her, Selina, that you're going to this musicale."
"Emmeline's even more given to dress now than when she was a girl," said Auntie. "She had trimming in steel and jet all over the bosom of her dress this morning, and big as she is, it looked too much."
Just here, as Aunt Viney brought in the plum preserves for dessert, Culpepper walked in with a note from his mother, inclosed in his weekly letter from home.
"It says 'Ann Eliza' on the outside, ole miss, so I'll have to reckon it's for you."