Athalie

That she sometimes saw things "around corners," as Jack put it, had

seemed natural enough to her. That, now and then, she seemed to

perceive things which nobody else noticed never disturbed her even

when she became aware that other people were unable to see them. To

her it was as though her own eyesight were normal, and astigmatism the

rule among other people.

But the blunt, merciless curiosity of other children soon taught

Athalie to be on her guard. She learned that embarrassed reserve which

tended toward secretiveness and untruth before she was eleven.

And in school she learned to lie, learned to deny accusations of being

different, pretended that what her sisters accused her of had been

merely "stories" made up to amuse them.

So, in school, she made school-life endurable for herself. Yet,

always, there seemed to be something between her and other children

that made intimacies impossible.

At the same time she was conscious of the admiration of the boys, of

something about herself that they liked outside of her athletic

abilities.

She had a great many friends among the boys; she could out-run,

out-jump, out-swim any of them in the big country school. She was

supple and trim, golden-haired and dark-eyed, and ready for anything

that required enterprise and activity of mind or body. Her ragged

skirts were still short at eleven--short enough not to impede her. And

she led the chase for pleasure all over that part of Long Island,

running wild with the pack from hill to tide-water until every farmer

in the district knew "the Greensleeve girl."

There was, of course, some deviltry among cherry trees and apple

orchards--some lawlessness born of sheer exuberance and superb

health--some malicious trespassing, some harrying of unpopular

neighbours. But not very much, considering.

Her home life was colourless, calm, comfortable, and uneventful as she

regarded it. Business at the Hotel Greensleeve had fallen off and in

reality the children had very little. But children at that age who

live all day in the open, require little except sympathetic

intelligence for their million daily questions.

This the Greensleeve children found wanting except when their mother

did her best to stimulate her own latent intelligence for their sakes.

But it rested on the foundation of an old-fashioned and limited

education. Only the polite, simpler, and more maidenly arts had been

taught her in the little New Jersey school her father had kept. And

her education ceased when she married Greensleeve, the ex-"professor"

of penmanship, a kind, gentle, unimaginative man, unusually dull even

for a teacher. And he was a failure even at that.