He gave Edna a knowing wink, offered her a pinch of snuff, told her “to keep a stiff upper lip,” and then rode off on old Bobtail to Rocky Point.
Long before noon everybody in town knew that the young lady in black was Miss Louise Overton, Uncle Phil’s niece, who wanted a school, and could teach music and drawing and everything, and Miss Ruth Gardner’s name was actually down as a pupil in drawing, while Squire Gardner headed the list with his two youngest children. It was a stroke of policy on Uncle Phil’s part to get the Gardners interested, especially Miss Ruth, whose name as a pupil in drawing was the direct means of gaining several more, so that when at noon Uncle Phil went home to dinner, it was settled that a select school should be opened at once in one of the rooms of the old Academy, Uncle Phil pledging himself to see that it was thoroughly cleaned and put in order, besides supplying the necessary fuel. Twenty scholars were promised sure, and Uncle Phil rode home in great spirits, and gave Bobtail an extra amount of hay, and then went in to Edna, to whom he said:
“I dunno ’bout the school, but there’s a place you can have at Squire Gardner’s as second girl, to wait on the door and table, and pass things on a little silver platter; wages, two dollars a week and found. Will you take it?”
“Certainly, if nothing better offers. I told you I would do anything to earn money,” Edna replied, whereupon Uncle Phil called her a “brick,” and said:
“He’d like to see her waiting on Ruth Gardner, yes he would,” and took a pinch of snuff, and told her the exact truth, and that Miss Ruth was to call on her that afternoon and see some of her drawings, and talk it over with her.
Miss Ruth, who was very proud and exclusive, was at first disposed to patronize “Miss Overton,” whose personal appearance she mentally criticised, deciding that she was very young and rather pretty, or would be if she had a little more style. Style was a kind of mania with Ruth, who, being rather plain, said frankly, that “as she could not be handsome, she would be stylish, which was next best to beauty;” and so she studied fashion and went to the extreme of everything, and astonished the Rocky Pointers with something new every month, and carried matters with a high hand, and queened it over all the young people, whom she alternately noticed and snubbed, and did more to help Edna by being a pupil herself than any six other young ladies could have done. She liked Edna from the first, and being of a romantic turn of mind, she liked her the more because she fancied her to be suffering from some other cause than the mere loss of friends. “A love affair, most likely,” she thought; and as one who knew how to sympathize in such matters, she took a great interest in her young teacher, and, after a time, grew confidential, and in speaking of marriage, said with a sigh and a downcast look in her gray eyes, that “her first and only love was dead, that the details of his death were too dreadful to narrate, and had made so strong an impression upon her that it was not at all probable she should ever marry now.”
And Edna listened with burning cheeks, and bent her head lower over the drawing she was making from memory of a bit of landscape seen from Aunt Jerry’s upper windows. Edna stood somewhat in awe of Miss Ruth with her dash and style, and flights of fancy, but from the moment little Marcia Belknap called and looked at her with her great, dreamy eyes, and spoke with her sweet low voice, she was the young girl’s sworn friend, and when the two grew so intimate that Marcia, who was also given to sentiment and fancies, and had a penchant for blighted hopes and broken hearts, told her teacher one night, just as Ruth had done, of her dead love, Edna caressed her bowed head and longed to tell her how foolish she was, and how the lost fruit, if gathered, would have proved but an apple of Sodom.
“Charlie was not worthy of so much love,” was the sad refrain ever repeating itself in her heart, until at last the old soreness began to give way, and she felt that the blow which had severed his life from hers had also set her free from a load she would have found hard to bear as the years went on, and she saw more and more the terrible mistake she had made.
The school was a great success, thanks to Uncle Phil, who worked like a hero to get her scholars, and who carried her each day to and from the old academy, while Becky vied with him in caring for and petting her young mistress. And Edna was very happy. Her school, including her pupils in drawing, was bringing her in over one hundred and fifty dollars a quarter, and as she had no outgoing expenses she was confidently expecting to lessen her debt to Roy in the spring, besides sending Aunt Jerry a draft which should surprise her.
As soon as her prospects were certain she wrote her aunt a long letter, full of Rocky Point and Uncle Phil, whose invitation for Aunt Jerry to visit him she gave word for word.