“I hope you’re right,” she said, pensively. “But I’ve wondered a lot lately about myself. Do you suppose there’s anything wrong with me—lack of ambition, maybe?”
He paused abruptly the more emphatically to dispose of her question, which had a deeper meaning than he knew.
“Don’t be foolish, Grace! You could keep up your college work if you wanted to—there’s a way of doing that, and get your degree. Suppose you thought of that—and teaching?”
“Yes. But I don’t feel any strong pull that way. I’m in a French class and I mean to keep that up. But before I was off the campus I was all keyed up to jump right into things. I want experiences—not teaching or anything like that—but to be as close to the heart of things as I can get!”
“Not a bit of fault with that! I’d trust you to find yourself anywhere. You’re too fine a girl ever to get lost in the shuffle. I guess you’ll learn a lot in Shipley’s; you see all kinds of people there every day, and as Aleck Pope says the proper study of mankind is man—also woman!”
In spite of herself the unhappiness with which the day had begun had stolen into her heart again. It had betrayed itself in her speech, the eagerness with which she appealed to Moore for approval and sympathy. She was contrasting what he was saying with what Trenton had said the previous night. No two men could be more unlike—Trenton the man of the world, with a hint of cynicism in his attitude toward life; John Moore, a son of the soil, with all his ideals intact, viewing life with hope and confidence.
V
Grace had not been mistaken in thinking that John’s presence would exert a cheering influence on the household. It was clearly written in the faces of Mrs. Durland and Ethel that they believed Grace was not beyond redemption so long as she was capable of appreciating the sterling worth of a high-minded and ambitious young man like Moore. John was not without a sense of the fitness of things. When Mrs. Durland and Ethel showed a disposition to maintain the conversation on lofty heights John indulged them for a time and then concentrated upon Stephen Durland. Farm machinery seemed to John a subject likely to interest the silent head of the house. Durland was soon painstakingly answering Moore’s questions as to the possibility of further reducing the man power required in crop production.
“I’ve hopped the clods since I could reach a plow handle,” said John, “and it does seem to me that with the tractor coming in——”
Durland delivered what amounted to a condensed lecture on the subject, spurred on by John’s sincere interest and practical questions.