“Then your mountain family may, nay, must be descended from the lost Guilford,” exclaimed Miss Scarborough. “You will understand my excitement when I tell you I have always supposed myself the sole representative of the American line. You say that one woman there also survives?”
“Yes, Dosia Vance. Her little girl—by the way, she has your name, Emily—is in our school.”
“Theodosia and Emily,—how the old names come down through the centuries!” said Miss Scarborough, adding, “You must put me in communication with this Dosia Vance at once.”
“Oh, she is unable to write,” was the reply.
Miss Scarborough’s face paled. “A Scarborough not write!” she cried incredulously.
“What possible chance could she have, sixty miles away from a school or a church? One remarkable thing, however, she accomplished after her marriage. With the help of an old blue-back speller and the family Bible, she taught herself and her husband to read. Writing was less possible. She is a woman of great natural intelligence, and is ambitious for her children.
“Her two eldest sons are at Berea College; we have Emily, and shall take the younger ones. Emily shows remarkable home-training; on the day she came to us she was a perfect lady.”
The result of this casual talk was that Miss Scarborough began an immediate correspondence with Dosia Vance through little Emily.
Of its progress the school women knew little, for soon after their return in the spring, vacation began, and all the children, including Emily, went home to hoe corn.
In June, however, a letter came to the school from the essayist. She wrote: