“I asked him that. He says some of the children are rather old for it, but the school is too small, or rather the teachers are too few, to make another class. So the ages run from the Osgood twins–”
“O, Peter and Perdita! I do love them. They are such a droll little pair. I beg your pardon, dear. I didn’t mean to interrupt. From Peter and Perdita to–to Elsmere, possibly?”
Dr. Helen laughed. “Exactly! Could you undertake Elsmere?”
Catherine sat up straight. “Yes, I could. Elsmere is unlucky, just as Algernon is. Everybody expects to be bored by Algernon and bothered or shocked by Elsmere. I know he is a little ‘limb o’ Satan,’ but if I’m going to take one brother on my shoulders, I might as well take them both. When does Mr. Kittredge want me to begin?”
“Not this week. You can go and see Mrs. Henley and talk it over with her. You’re showing a fine public spirit, Daughter mine, but let me suggest that you really can’t do much work for the town this summer, especially if you expect to entertain 26 guests! I don’t approve of vacations that are busier than the school year!”
“O, the library won’t take long to start, if it starts at all. And Algernon will run it and his being busy will give me several extra hours weekly! And the children will only be Sundays. I promised Alice I’d do some Bible study this summer, anyway, and it might as well be done for that. She thought I was something of a heathen because I knew Shakespeare better than the Bible.”
“That only means you know Shakespeare very well, however. By the way, would you like that little old set in the guest-room for your library? I put it there, because there wasn’t a shelf free anywhere else, and we are rather overstocked with the gentleman’s writings in the rest of the house. Clara Lyndesay laughed at finding them there. She says she is going to write an essay some day on guest-room literature, and its implications.”
Catherine laughed, too. “It would be delicious if she did. I wish she would write things, Mother, and not just paint pictures. Do you suppose there’s any hope of her coming back to this country this summer?”
“I shouldn’t be greatly surprised. She plans to spend some weeks on the Isle of Wight, and that is so near this side that perhaps we can lure her over. An aunt left her a place in New England, you know, which she means to fit up for a studio 27 sometime. Father should be coming home now. Let’s go down to the corner and see if we can see him. O, my daughter!” as Catherine sprang up and took her mother’s arm, “how you have grown beyond me!”
“It’s just my head that’s above you,” said Catherine, tucking her mother’s arm into her own. “It’s the fashion nowadays for girls to be taller than their mothers, but they don’t begin to come up to them in mind and manners. Miss Eliot told us so in History!”