"Have you made up your mind, my dear?" said Mrs. Garth, laying the

letters down.

"I shall go to the school at York," said Mary. "I am less unfit to

teach in a school than in a family. I like to teach classes best.

And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be done."

"Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world," said Mrs.

Garth, with a touch of rebuke in her tone. "I could understand your

objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Mary, or if you

disliked children."

"I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like,

mother," said Mary, rather curtly. "I am not fond of a schoolroom: I

like the outside world better. It is a very inconvenient fault of

mine."

"It must be very stupid to be always in a girls' school," said Alfred.

"Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard's pupils walking two and

two."

"And they have no games worth playing at," said Jim. "They can neither

throw nor leap. I don't wonder at Mary's not liking it."

"What is that Mary doesn't like, eh?" said the father, looking over his

spectacles and pausing before he opened his next letter.

"Being among a lot of nincompoop girls," said Alfred.

"Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?" said Caleb, gently,

looking at his daughter.

"Yes, father: the school at York. I have determined to take it. It is

quite the best. Thirty-five pounds a-year, and extra pay for teaching

the smallest strummers at the piano."

"Poor child! I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan," said

Caleb, looking plaintively at his wife.

"Mary would not be happy without doing her duty," said Mrs. Garth,

magisterially, conscious of having done her own.

"It wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that," said

Alfred--at which Mary and her father laughed silently, but Mrs. Garth

said, gravely--

"Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that

you think disagreeable. And suppose that Mary could help you to go to

Mr. Hanmer's with the money she gets?"

"That seems to me a great shame. But she's an old brick," said Alfred,

rising from his chair, and pulling Mary's head backward to kiss her.

Mary colored and laughed, but could not conceal that the tears were

coming. Caleb, looking on over his spectacles, with the angles of his

eyebrows falling, had an expression of mingled delight and sorrow as he

returned to the opening of his letter; and even Mrs. Garth, her lips

curling with a calm contentment, allowed that inappropriate language to

pass without correction, although Ben immediately took it up, and sang,

"She's an old brick, old brick, old brick!" to a cantering measure,

which he beat out with his fist on Mary's arm.




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