I considered this as one of the least among my many trials and perplexities. Oftentimes I sighed for the light-hearted, "irresponsible" days of yore, when "missions" were, as yet, to me unknown.
School was the greatest perplexity. Grandma Keeler's tenderness grew more impressive each day.
"It seems to me you're a growin' bleak and holler-eyed, teacher," she would say to me when I came home at night.
So I indulged more and more in a deeply sentimental self-pity, and felt a growing satisfaction in the consciousness that I was enduring martyrdom. It was more by reason of a stubborn and desperate pride, I think, than from higher motives, that, in my letters home, I said nothing of the discomforts and discouragements which attended my course. I chose to dilate on the beautiful scenery of Wallencamp, and the quaint originality of its inhabitants.
CHAPTER V.
GRANDMA KEELER GETS GRANDPA READY FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL.
Sunday morning nothing arose in Wallencamp save the sun.
At least, that celestial orb had long forgotten all the roseate flaming of his youth, in an honest, straightforward march through the heavens, ere the first signs of smoke came curling lazily up from the Wallencamp chimneys.
I had retired at night, very weary, with the delicious consciousness that it wouldn't make any difference when I woke up the next morning, or whether, indeed. I woke at all. So I opened my eyes leisurely and lay half-dreaming, half-meditating on a variety of things.