Then when it was written, she put her head down on her arms, folded upon her writing-table; there were tears in her eyes when she lifted it again.
“When he said ‘our class,’ ought I to have spoken?” she asked herself. “No, he must know; I told Mrs. Paul. No, no, I couldn’t!” And all her love and all her pride for her father rebelled against the slight to him which such a confession would have been; it would have seemed to imply that he was less gentle in soul than Richard Temple himself, or any one else.
Mr. Temple saw her at church the next day and walked home with her; although she kept all the while on Mrs. Paul’s right, while Dick had to walk on the outside and could only look across at her, which did not please him in the least. She did not talk to him very much, but she seemed to have a good deal to say to his cousin, which perplexed her adorer, for though he had a proper regard for the stout and estimable Mrs. Paul, he could not see why Miss Graham should talk to her with such apparent interest, when an intelligent young man was really eager for a look or a word. He heard her laughing a little about going home “like a stranger and foreigner,” she said.
“I haven’t seen South Bend for nearly five years; you know it is such an expensive journey.”
Mrs. Paul said yes, she supposed it was. “It takes four days and five nights to get there, doesn’t it? It seems to me I passed through it once. I suppose those Western places are very progressive, aren’t they? They are not shocked at the idea of a university education for women. One runs up against that here very often.”
Annie shook her head, smiling. “Isn’t it funny to think that people do really feel that it is unfeminine; ‘threatening to the womanly woman,’ as they say.”
“I’ve come to think that the ‘womanly woman’ means the brainless woman,” Mrs. Paul said.
“What fools people are who feel that way about the higher education of women,” Dick broke in. “It’s incredible! Miss Graham, I shall be passing through South Bend in a fortnight or so; may I call?”
“Of course; I shall be delighted to see you,” Annie said, “and my father will be so glad to see any friend of Mrs. Paul’s; he knows how kind you have been to me,” she ended, with an affectionate look at Dick’s cousin.