Rachel gave no token of interest. Mrs. Woodward went on:
“She seemed to think a good deal of that picture of yours, and she spoke as if you’d ought not to neglect any providence that put it in your way to improve yourself. I don’t use her words, but that’s what they come to in the end. She said if you would like to go down and study drawing in Boston or New York, this winter, she wanted I should let her lend you the money to do it. I was put to it what to say without seeming to hurt her feelings. I didn’t make any direct answer at the time, and I haven’t since. I wa’n’t sure in my own mind whether we should do right to accept of such an offer unless we could see our way clear to pay the money back, and what made me more doubtful was her saying that you’d ought to be very certain of your own feelings, whether you really wanted to be a painter or not, for if you didn’t it would be a misery every way if you was one. I don’t know a great deal about such things, but I thought that was sensible. She said there wa’n’t any doubt about your making a living that way, if once you gave your mind to it.”
Still Rachel did not change her posture or expression, but she passed her fingers over the hem of her apron across her lap.
“As to the money,” Mrs. Woodward went on, “there’s your school money in the bank; you’ve worked hard enough for that, and it’s rightfully yours. I know you meant to give it to James for his schooling, but now it don’t seem quite fair you should. Why don’t you take it yourself, and go off somewheres, and study, the way Mrs. Gilbert said?”
“I don’t want the money, mother,” said the girl, coldly.
Mrs. Woodward waited awhile before she asked, “Don’t you feel sure ’t you want to study in that way?”
“Yes, I think I could do it. Of course it isn’t as if I were a man, but I believe I could be a painter, and I should like it better than teaching.”
“Then why don’t you take up with the idea? It would be a little change for you; and maybe, if you was away from the place for a while, you might—get to feeling differently.”
The mother was patient with her daughter while the girl sat thinking. The countenance of neither changed when at last the girl broke silence and said, very steadily, “I might go in the spring, mother. But I’m going to stay here this winter. If I’ve got any trouble, I can’t run away from it, and I wouldn’t if I could. If the trouble is here, the help is here, too, I presume.” After a little pause, she added, “I don’t want you should speak to me about it again, mother—ever.”
The mother said nothing, but awkwardly rose, and moved shyly to where her daughter sat. Her mouth trembled, but, whatever intent she had, she ended by merely laying on the girl’s head her large, toil-worn, kitchen-coarsened hand, with its bony knuckles and stubbed, broken nails. She let it rest there a moment and then went softly out of the room.