"Oh, I tolerate him, my dear," I answered. "We're not expected to entertain a particular liking or dislike for everybody we know. There are a great many people we must just simply tolerate."
Rebecca's eyes fell again. "He won't harm you, teacher," she said; "for you was used to folks. Sometime you might remember—I wasn't used to folks."
Occupied with my own thoughts, I passed lightly over the girl's slow, trembling speech. She turned away, and I bent to the complacent perusal of my letter. In my then composed and exalted frame of mind its contents were not calculated to create in me either great emotion or surprise. And not because the mere fact of the fisherman's absence had suddenly rendered him more desirable in my eyes, but as the result of a recent determination on my part to take an utterly worldly and practical view of life, I resolved to give this letter the most careful and serious consideration.
The fisherman was of good family, and he was rich; these statements, artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter, were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning the gentleman.
Respectability and wealth—items not supposed to weigh too heavily with the romantic mind of youth—but I believed that I was no longer either young or romantic. Moreover, I was slowly realizing the fact that school-teaching in Wallencamp was not likely to furnish me the means for making an excessively brilliant personal display, nor for carrying out to any extent my subordinate plans for a world-wide philanthropy.
"Perhaps, after all then," I argued; "it is only left for me to give up my ideas about being unique and independent and sublime, 'take up with a good offer,' and step resolutely, without any sentimental awe, into the great orderly ranks of the married sisterhood."
My life had been but a varied list of surprises to my family and acquaintances, why not effect the crowning surprise of all, by doing something they might have expected of me?
Well, I had dreamed of higher things—but this was a strange, restless, disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich.
My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight, encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and companion.
In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under the most thrilling circumstances, having frequently been married to them at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves and wear crape for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man—a man, with red hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the realistic vision.