When she was about sixteen her father died. This event, which left her a homeless orphan, was turned by the practical kindness of Parson Townsend—the good old minister who had stood between her and a thousand annoyances and wrongs—into the most fortunate event of her life. He, not without some previous domestic controversy, took the girl into his own family, and there, under kind and Christian influences, she lived for a number of years.
At eighteen her school-life terminated, and, by the advice of Parson Townsend, she applied for a position as teacher of the primary school.
The spirit with which her application was met was a revelation and a shock to her. The outward kindness and tolerance which of late years had been manifested toward her, had led her into a fictitious state of content and confidence.
"I was foolish enough," she said to herself, with bitterness, "to think that because the boys do not hoot after me in the street, people had forgotten, or did not care."
The feeling of ostracism stung, but could not degrade, a nature like hers. She withdrew more and more into herself, turned her hands to such work as she could find to do, and went her way again, stifling as best she might the anguished cry which sometimes would rise to her lips:
"What does God mean by it?"
Few saw the beauty of those deep, clear eyes and pathetic lips, or the splendor of her burnished hair, or the fine curves of her tall, upright figure. She was only odd, and "queer looking"—only Lilly O'Connell; very pleasant of speech, and quick at her needle, and useful at picnics and church fairs, and in case of sickness or emergencies of any kind,—but Lilly O'Connell still,—or "Tiger-Lily," for the old name had never been altogether laid aside.
Ten years passed by. The good people of Ridgemont were fond of alluding to the remarkable progress and development made by their picturesque little town during the past decade, but in reality the change was not so great. A few new dwellings, built in the modern efflorescent style, had sprung up, to the discomfiture of the prim, square houses, with dingy white paint and dingier green blinds, which belonged to another epoch; a brick block, of almost metropolitan splendor, cast its shadow across the crooked village street, and a soldiers' monument, an object of special pride and reverence, adorned the centre of the small common, opposite the Hide and Leather Bank and the post-office.
Beside these, a circulating library, a teacher of china-painting and a colored barber were casually mentioned to strangers, as proofs of the slightness of difference in the importance of Ridgemont and some other towns of much more pretension.