"Claire, when I see the energy with which she carries out one of her imaginings, connected with you, I am very grateful that Louis insisted on my being present at that first interview between you and him, and that I heard the truth from his own lips, for the mother is succeeding in deceiving every one else."
"And I do not know how to help it," Claire said, with troubled voice. "It seems a strange thing to be living a falsehood; but when I try to explain to her, she puts me gently aside, and acts as though I had not spoken; and others have no right to question me about the truth of her theories."
"Except myself. Have I the right? Was it as emphatic a refusal as poor Louis understood it? Believe me, I am not asking merely to gratify idle curiosity."
"There never was anything in it, Mr. Chessney, and there never could have been."
The passage of all these and many other events not chronicled here, consumed the greater portion of the summer vacation. For Claire Benedict was letting the summer slip from her without going home. Sore had been the trial at first; but a few weeks before the term closed, opportunity had been offered her to teach a summer class of city pupils, at prices that were almost equal to her year's salary. What right had she, who wanted to bestow so many luxuries on her mother, to close her eyes to such an opportunity as this, merely because she was homesick for a sight of that mother's face? It had been hard to reconcile the sister, especially, to this new state of things. The gentle mother had long ago learned the lesson that what looked like manifest duty must not be tampered with, no matter how hard to bear; but the hot-hearted young sister refused to see anything in it except an added trial too great to be borne. Many letters had to be written before there was a final reluctant admission that two hundred dollars more to depend on, paltry sum though it was, would make a great difference with the mother's winter comforts. The letter in which poor Dora admitted this was blistered with tears; but the sacrifice was made, and the extra term had been well entered upon.
There was much outside of the class and the life being lived on the hill to occupy Claire's thoughts. I hope you do not suppose that the work on the part of "the girls" had been accomplished during a sort of "spasm," and that now they were ready to drop back into inaction. Nothing was farther from their thoughts. If you have imagined so, you have not understood how thoroughly some of them had sacrificed in order to do. We never forget that for which we sacrifice.
Besides, the habit of thinking first of the church, and the various causes which are the tributaries of the church, was formed. That the work was to go on, was demonstrated in many ways; not the least by the random remarks which came so naturally from the lips of the workers.
"Girls," had Ruth Jennings said, when they lingered one evening after prayer-meeting, "when we cushion these seats, we shall have to send somebody after the material who can carry the carpet and wall paper in his mind's eye. It will never do to have a false note put in here to jar this harmony."
"When we cushion the seats!" Claire heard it, and laughed softly. Who had said that the seats were ever to be cushioned? But she knew they would be, and that before very long.
On another evening, Mary Burton had said: