William expressed his sorrow at not being able to educate his children as he wished; he appreciated the offer now made. "But," he said, earnestly, "don't undertake this, unless you are sure you can go on with it; I don't want you to give him up!"
A few days later Eneas Myall came with his hard-earned money, and placed it in Oliver's hands, asking him to take it with the love of its donors. And so, at the age of sixteen, Oliver Carr went to the University at Harrodsburg, to study for the ministry.
So, this is what we have found, in our quest of a possible husband for Mattie Myers—this Oliver Carr, who, as it appears, is far from being a rich young man. Will brother Joe be satisfied? Nay, will he ever consent? At any rate, they must be brought together. Let us return to the overworked pupil of John Augustus Williams, she who parsed, in class, too much of that MS. of his "Life of John Smith" for her health. We shall find her still upon her sick-bed, hovering between life and death.
CHAPTER IV.
A SCHOOL GIRL'S NOTE BOOK.
Of course she recovered, else there need be no biography of Mattie Myers, except to teach young girls not to study too hard—a lesson seldom needed. But the life we are following is to teach a quite different lesson. She emerges from the sickroom with a constitution shattered; not altogether broken, but much out of repair every way; mentally, in particular; for the mind has developed enormous energy in proportion as the body has wasted away; and all the nerves that are controlled from the general office are sent tingling at the least noise—even at the tread of a great thought.
The girl of sixteen is bewildered with herself. That grasp of the will which had held her to her tasks, to the outraging of her physical self, has suddenly slipped—it cannot be tightened up to the proper tension, at least not now. This inability to sleep that has come upon her, is to continue throughout her life; this nervous excitement of vital forces, this disproportion of mind and matter, this thinness of form, this determination to carry self to the end marked out, shown in the firm mouth—we are to find all these unchanged in after years.
In the meantime, her resolution to carry on her education has not faltered. She cannot go back to Daughters' College—Professor Williams does not know how to bear lightly upon the mind, and the girl has not even yet learned to spare herself. But there is a certain convent, the St. Catherine de Sienna's—Joe will send her there for a year. The very name is restful. The course is such that a young girl may carry it with one hand. Mattie will attend a year; that will graduate her from the St. Catherine de Sienna's. If, by that time, her strength has come back, she may finish at Harrodsburg. The convent will be so quiet—no levees, no marching to church in solid-green, no receptions in the parlors—nothing but trees and birds and silent-footed sisters, and cool gray walls, and a little French, a little ancient history, and such portions of the Old Testament history as have not become Protestantized.