“Maria is dignified,” said Evelyn, “but of course she has taught school a long time, and a school-teacher has to be dignified.”
“Are you intending to teach school?” asked Lee, and even as he asked the question he felt amused. The idea of this flower-like thing teaching school, or teaching anything, was absurd. She was one of the pupils of life, not one of the expounders.
“No, I think not,” said Evelyn. Then she said, “I have never thought about it.” Then an incomprehensible little blush flamed upon her cheeks. Evelyn was thinking that she should be married instead of doing anything else, but that the man did not consider. He was singularly unversed in feminine nature.
A bell rang from the academy, and Evelyn turned about with reluctance. “There is the bell,” said she. She was secretly proud although somewhat abashed at being seen walking back to the academy with the new principal. Addie Hemingway was looking out of a window, and she said to the other girl, the same whom she had addressed in the chapel:
“See, Evelyn Edgham has got him in tow already.”
That night, when Maria and Evelyn arrived home, Aunt Maria asked Evelyn how she liked the new principal. “Oh, he's perfectly splendid,” replied Evelyn. Then she blushed vividly. Aunt Maria noticed it and gave a swift glance at Maria, but Maria did not notice it at all. She was so wrapped in her own dreams that she was abstracted. After she went to bed that night she lay awake a long time dreaming, just as she had done when she had been a little girl. Her youth seemed to rush back upon her like a back-flood. She caught herself dreaming of love-scenes in that same little wood where Wollaston and Evelyn had walked that day. She never thought of Evelyn and the possibility of her thinking of Wollaston. But Evelyn, in her little, white, maiden bed, was awake and dreaming too. Outside the wind was blowing and the leaves dropping and the eternal stars shining overhead. It seemed as if so much maiden-dreaming in the house should make it sound with song, but it was silent and dark to the night. Only the reflection of the street-lamp made it evident at all to occasional passers. It is well that the consciousness of human beings is deaf to such emotions, or all individual dreams would cease because of the multiple din.
Chapter XXXII
Evelyn, as the weeks went on, did not talk as much as she had been accustomed to do. She did not pour her confidences into her sister's ears. She never spoke of the new principal. She studied assiduously, and stood exceedingly well in all her classes. She had never taken so much pains with her pretty costumes. When her mother sent her a Christmas present of a Paris gown, she danced with delight. There was to be a Christmas-tree in the academy chapel, and she planned to wear it. Although it was a Paris gown it was simple enough, a pretty, girlish frock of soft white cloth, with touches of red. “I can wear holly in my hair, and it will be perfectly lovely,” Evelyn said. But she came down with such a severe cold and sore throat at the very beginning of the holidays that going to Westbridge was out of the question. Evelyn lamented over the necessity of her staying at home like a child. She even cried.
“I wouldn't be such a baby,” said Aunt Maria. At times Aunt Maria could not quite forgive Evelyn for being Ida Slome's child, especially when she showed any weakness. She looked severely now at poor Evelyn, in her red house-wrapper, weeping in her damp little handkerchief. “I should think you were about ten,” she said.
Evelyn wiped her eyes and sniffed. Her throat was very sore, and her cold was also in her head. Her pretty lips were disfigured with fever-sores. Her eyes were inflamed.