"Selina ... sat down to write her note."
Selina got her pen and paper and sat down to write her note, then paused and fell to dreaming. She saw Cousin Maria's farm, three thousand acres she believed it was, orderly, productive and prosperous. In her mind's eye it lay in zones, as it were, the outer boundary being the old stone wall along the encircling limestone pike; the tilled fields came next, of hemp, tobacco, corn and what not; the middle zone between these tilled fields and the houseyard was the wide-spreading, park-like woodland pastures; and heart of it all, reached through the big stone-pillared iron gate, was the house in its houseyard, with the garden behind. She loved this house of her Cousin Maria's, set in lilac and syringa shrubberies, a one-storied white brick, wide and ample and flanked by wings, with big gallery porches front and back, and beneath a high basement containing kitchen, laundry, storerooms and the farm offices. In recall Selina saw Cousin Maria now, too, comely like Auntie, surveying her capably and appraisingly as she welcomed her, had she and Auntie gone. And she saw Culpepper, too, as it were at Cousin Maria's side as they welcomed her, regarding her quizzically.
Cousin Maria and the farm and Culpepper, seemed to stand visualized thus in her mind, symbol for some suddenly defined thing. Was it the best of the old things? The worth while of the established things?
Then she thought swiftly of the vista opening to her of the unknown, with Miss Pocahontas and her outstretched hand awaiting, and her heart leaped!
She began her letter and after thanking her Cousin Maria for the invitation, went on to state her plans.
I want you to know, Cousin Maria, and Culpepper as well, that I'm going away about the end of September to Florida to teach, with Miss Diana Talbot who says she knows you, and with Miss Pocahontas Boswell. It's not only to try to help myself and so make it easier for them here at home, but because I want to go so badly I can't pretend this feature of it doesn't come first. I say this because Culpepper would see through me and say it for me if I didn't. Papa knows this part of it and sympathizes, and I'm a little afraid Mamma and Auntie suspect it and don't, as Mamma, for one, cries so about it most of the time, it makes it hard, but I can't feel it possible for me to be unselfish enough now to give it up.
Culpepper came down a week before it was necessary for his return to the law school, to see about this thing of Selina going away as he put it to Auntie bluntly. He walked in one evening big and sunburned and bold and blatant with health and stored energy and conviction.
It was the first week in September and hot and he found the household, Mamma, Auntie and Selina sitting out on the stone steps in the starlight, Papa inside reading his paper, the aroma of his cigar floating out.
"What does it all mean?" Culpepper without preamble demanded of the older ladies—"this thing Selina wrote about of going away to teach? Keep still, Selina, we know your side of it."