“No, darling,” said grandmother, “I found out about them in books. And telling you about the girls is getting you ready to read about them all the little things the world has a right to know. For they belong to the whole world. Maria did not learn fancy work. I can guess what she would say of some girls who care more for fancy stitches than for studies. She has said, ‘A woman might be learning seven languages while she is learning fancy work.’ Still, girls, educate your fingers, and make your homes pretty and attractive. But don’t let stitches hinder the stars—God has his place for both.”
“Yes, the women worked pretty things for the Tabernacle,” I said. (For I love to make pretty things.)
“But she did know how to knit, and she knit stockings a yard long for her father as long as he lived. She studied while she knit, as I used to do when I was a little girl. When she was a little girl how she did read! Before she was ten years old she read through Rollin’s Ancient History.
“One night in October, 1847, she was gazing through her telescope, and what do you think she saw? An unknown comet. She was afraid it was an old story. Frederick VI., King of Denmark, sixteen years before, had offered a gold medal to the person who should discover a telescopic comet. And the little Nantucket girl, who had knitted stockings a yard long, and washed endless dishes, discovered the telescopic comet, and to her was awarded the gold medal. And now the scientific journals announced Miss Mitchell’s comet. In England she was eagerly welcomed by Sir John and Lady Herschel, and Alexander Von Humboldt took her beside him on a sofa and talked to her about everybody he knew and everything he knew. And, oh! the other great people who were glad to see her. She saw in Rome Frederika Bremer, of whose comical, interesting, sad girlhood I must tell you some day. But I musn’t forget the little house Maria bought for her father before she went to the observatory of Vassar College. It cost sixteen hundred and fifty dollars, and she saved the money out of her yearly salary of one hundred dollars, and what she could earn in government work.”
“I don’t think I mind washing dishes so much now,” declared Nan.
And we all laughed.
“Good,” exclaimed Judith’s listener. “Keep on with the dozen, and salt them down. When I Was a Boy series will be a good thing for you. Judith, honest, now, would you rather go away to school this winter, or read and write with Marion and me?”
“Study with you,” was the quick decision; “I can think of nothing in the world I would like so well.”
“Then that is settled,” he replied with satisfaction; “I feared you would be restless. You are at the frisky and restless age. Marion was sure you would not be.”
“But—” Judith hesitated and colored painfully, “if I am to teach by and by, would it be better for me to go to school? I can borrow the money and then earn it by teaching and repay Aunt Affy.”