THE dreary weather was not gone by the next morning. A keen wind was blowing, and ominous flakes of snow were fluttering their signals in the air; but the music-room was warm, and the music-teacher herself had gotten above the weather. She was at the piano, waiting for the bell to ring that should give the signal for morning prayers.
Around the stove were gathered a group of girls who had hushed their voices at her entrance. They were afraid of the pale music-teacher. Hitherto they had regarded her with mingled feelings of awe and dislike.
Her very dress, plain black though it was, with its exquisite fit and finish, seemed to mark her as belonging to another world than themselves. They expected to learn music of her, but they expected nothing else.
It was therefore with a visible start of surprise that they received her first advances in the shape of a question, as she suddenly wheeled on the piano-stool and confronted them:
"Girls, don't you think our church is just dreadful?"
Whether it was a delicate tact, or a sweet spirit born of the last evening's experience, that led Claire Benedict to introduce that potent little "our" into her sentence, I will leave you to judge.
It had a curious effect on the girls around the stove. These bright-faced, keen-brained, thoroughly-good girls, who had lived all their lives in a different atmosphere from hers. They were good scholars in algebra, they were making creditable progress in Latin, and some of them were doing fairly well in music; but they could no more set their hats on their heads with the nameless grace which hovered around Claire Benedict's plainly-trimmed plush one, than they could fly through the air. This is just one illustration of the many differences between them. This young lady had lived all her days in the environments of city culture; they had caught glimpses of city life, and it meant to them an unattainable fairy-land, full of lovely opportunities and probabilities, such as would never come to them. It struck every one of those girls as a peculiarly pleasant thing that their lovely music-teacher had said "our" instead of "your."
One of the less timid presently rallied sufficiently to make answer:
"Dreadful? It is just perfectly horrid! It fairly gives me the blues to go to church. Girls, mother has almost spoiled her new cashmere sweeping the church floor with it. She says she would be ashamed to have our wood-shed look as badly as that floor does. I don't see why the trustees allow such slovenliness."
"It is because we can not afford to pay a decent sexton," sighed one of the others. "We are so awful poor! That is the cry you always hear if there is a thing said. I don't believe we deserve a church at all."