Interrupted

by Pansy

But they could not make vacancies for Claire in the line in which her talents fitted her to work. They could not make a strong woman of the mother, able to shoulder burdens such as are always waiting for strong shoulders. They could and would have supported them. For a time, at least, this would have been done joyfully; they longed to do it. They offered help in all possible delicate ways. The trouble was, this family would have none of it. Grateful?—oh, yes, but persistent in gently declining that which was not an absolute necessity.

In the very nature of things, as the days passed, they would be in a sense forgotten. Claire saw this, and the mother saw it. The rooms they had taken were very far removed from the old church and the old home and the old circle of friends. It consumed hours of the day to make the journey back and forth. Of course, it could not be made often, nor by many. Of course, the gaps which their changes had made would be filled in time; it was not reasonable to expect otherwise. Nobody expected it, but it was very bitter.

And the very first open door that Claire saw was an opportunity to teach music in a little unpretentious academy, in a little unpretentious town, away back among the hills, two hundred miles from the city that had always been her home.

It took talking—much of it—to reconcile the mother and sister to the thought of a separation. Through all their changes this one had not been suggested to their minds. They had expected, as a matter of course, to keep together. But necessity is a wonderful logician. The bank account was alarmingly small, and growing daily smaller. Even the unpractical mother and sister could see this. Something must be done, and here was the open door. Why not enter it at once, instead of waiting in idleness and suspense through the winter for something better? Thus argued Claire: "It will not be very easy to leave you, mamma, as you may well imagine," and here the sensitive chin would quiver, "but I should feel safe in doing so, for these ugly rooms are really very conveniently arranged, and Dora would learn to look after everything that Molly could not do by giving two days of work in a week. I have made positive arrangements with her for two days, and she depends upon it; you must not disappoint her. And, mamma, I have thought of what papa said about us," here the low voice took on a tone of peculiar tenderness, "perhaps Dora will learn self-reliance if she is left to shield and care for you; it will be a powerful motive. You know she leans on me now, naturally."

This was Claire's strongest argument, and, together with the argument of necessity, prevailed.

Barely four weeks from the "to-morrow" which had contained her last bright plans, she was installed as music teacher in the plain little academy building situated in South Plains.

And now I know that I need not even attempt to describe the sinking of heart with which she moved down the shabby narrow aisle, and seated herself in the uncushioned pew of the shabby little church on that first Sabbath morning.

Uncushioned! that was by no means the worst of the pew's failings. The back was at least four inches lower than it ought to have been, even for so slight a form as Claire's, and was finished with a moulding that projected enough to form a decided ridge. Of course, for purpose of support, the thing was a failure, and, as to appearance, nothing more awkward in the line of sittings could be imagined.

Fairly seated in this comfortless spot, the homesick girl looked about her to take in her dreary surroundings. Bare floors, not over clean, the most offensive looking faded red curtains flapping disconsolately against the old-fashioned, small-paned soiled windows; a platform, whose attempts at carpeting represented a large-patterned, soiled ingrain rag, whose colors, once much too bright for the place, had faded into disreputable ghosts of their former selves. The whole effect seemed to Claire by far more dreary than the bare floor of the aisles. A plain, square, four-legged table, that had not even been dusted lately, did duty as a pulpit desk, and a plain, wooden-backed, wooden-seated chair stood behind it. These were the sole attempts at furnishing. The walls of this desolate sanctuary seemed begrimed with the smoke of ages; they were festooned with cobwebs, these furnishing the only attempts at hiding the unsightly cracks. The few dreary-looking kerosene lamps disposed about the room gave the same evidence of neglect in their sadly smoked chimneys and general air of discouragement. However, had Claire but known it, she had cause for gratitude over the fact that they were not lighted, for they could prove their unfitness for the place they occupied in a much more offensive way.