"I'm afraid," said Mrs. LeGrand, "that you'll be a little lonely, dear child, but it won't be for long. Time flies so!"
"I don't exactly get lonely," said Hagar gravely. "You are going down the river, aren't you?"
"Yes, for ten days. My dear friends at Idlewood won't hear of my not coming. They were my dear husband's dearest cousins. Mrs. Lane and Miss Bedford, together with Mrs. Brown, will take, I am sure, the best of care of things here."
"Yes, of course. We'll get on beautifully," said Hagar. "Mr. Laydon is not going away either. His mother is ill and he will not leave her. He says that if we like to listen, he will come over in the evenings and read aloud to us."
Mr. Laydon was teacher of Belles-Lettres at Eglantine, a well-looking young gentleman, with a good voice, and apparently a sincere devotion to the best literature. Eglantine and Mr. Laydon alike believed in the future of Mr. Laydon. It was understood that his acceptance of a position here was of the nature of a makeshift, a mere pot-boiler on his road to high places. He and his mother were domiciled with a cousin from whose doorstep you might toss a pebble into the Eglantine grounds. In the past few years the neighbouring town had begun to grow; it had thrown out a street which all but touched the osage-orange hedge.
Mrs. LeGrand made a slight motion with her hand on which was her wedding-ring, with an old pearl ring for guard. "I shall tell Mrs. Lane not to let him do that too often. I have a great esteem for Mr. Laydon, but Eglantine cannot be too careful. No one with girls in their charge can be too careful!—What is the Gilead Balm news?"
"The letter was from grandmother. She is well, and so is grandfather. They have had a great deal of company. Uncle Bob has had rheumatism, but he goes hunting just the same. The Hawk Nest Coltsworths are coming for Christmas—all except Ralph. He is going home with a classmate. Grandmother says he is the handsomest man at the University, and that if I hear tales of his wildness I am not to believe them. She says all men are a little wild at first. Aunt Serena is learning how to illuminate texts. Mrs. Green has gone to see her daughter, who has something the matter with her spine. Thomasine's uncle in New York is going to have her visit him, and grandmother thinks he means to get Thomasine a place in a store. Grandmother says no girl ought to work in a store, but Thomasine's people are very poor, and I don't see what she can do. She's got to live. Corker has a place, but he isn't doing very well. Car'line and Isham have put a porch to their cabin, and Mary Magazine has gotten religion."
"Girls of Thomasine's station," said Mrs. LeGrand, "are beginning more and more, I'm sorry to see, to leave home to work for pay. It's spreading, too; it's not confined to girls of her class. Only yesterday I heard that a bright, pretty girl that I used to know at the White had gone to Philadelphia to study to be a nurse, and there's Nellie Wynne trying to be a journalist! A journalist! There isn't the least excuse for either of those cases. One of those girls has a brother and the other a father quite able to support them."
"But if there really isn't any one?" said Hagar wistfully. "And if you feel that you are costing a lot—" Her dreams at night were beginning to be shot with a vague but insistent "If I could write—if I could paint or teach—if I could earn money—"
"There is almost always some one," answered Mrs. LeGrand. "And if a girl knows how to make the best of herself, there inevitably arrives her own establishment and the right man to take care of her. If"—she shrugged—"if she doesn't know how to make the best of herself, she might as well go work in a store. No one would especially object. That is, they would not object except that when that kind of thing creeps up higher in the scale of society, and girls who can perfectly well be supported at home go out and work for pay, it makes an unfortunate kind of precedent and reacts and reflects upon those who do know how to make the best of themselves."