“You are very kind,” said Mabel Frost demurely.
“It is a responsible, office — ahem! — that of instructor of youth,” said the Squire, with labored gravity.
“I hope I appreciate it.”
“Have you ever — ahem! — taught before?
“This will be my first school.”
“This — ahem! — is against you, but I trust you may succeed.”
“I trust so, sir,”
“You will have to pass an examination in the studies you are to teach — before ME,” said the Squire.
“I hope you may find me competent,” said Mabel modestly,
“I hope so, Miss Frost; my examination will be searching. I feel it my duty to the town to be very strict.”
“Would you like to examine me now, Mr. Hadley?”
“No,” said the Squire hastily, “no, no — I haven’t my papers with me. I will trouble you to come to my house tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock, if convenient.”
“Certainly, sir. May I ask where your house is?”
“My boy shall call for you in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
Mabel spoke as if this terminated the colloquy, but Squire Hadley had something more to say.
“I think we have said nothing about your wages, Miss Frost,” he remarked.
“You can pay me whatever is usual,” said Mabel, with apparent indifference.
“We have usually paid seven dollars a week.”
“That will be quite satisfactory, sir.”
Soon after Squire Hadley had left the hotel Mabel Frost went slowly up to her room.
“So I am to earn seven dollars a week,” she said to herself. “This is wealth indeed!”
Chapter 2
It is time to explain that the new school teacher’s name was not Mabel Frost, but Mabel Frost Fairfax, and that she had sought a situation at Granville not from necessity but from choice — indeed from something very much like a whim. Hers was a decidedly curious case. She had all the advantages of wealth. She had youth, beauty, and refinement. She had the entree to the magic inner circle of metropolitan society. And yet there was in her an ever present sense of something lacking. She had grown weary of the slavery of fashion. Young as she was, she had begun to know its hollowness, its utter insufficiency as the object of existence. She sought some truer interest in life. She had failed to secure happiness, she reasoned, because thus far she had lived only for herself. Why should she not live, in part at least, for others? Why not take her share of the world’s work? She was an orphan, and had almost no family ties. The experiment that she contemplated might be an original and unconventional one, but she determined to try it.
But what could she do?
It was natural, perhaps, that she should think of teaching. She had been fortunate enough to graduate at a school where the useful as well as the ornamental received its share of attention, and her natural gifts, as well as studious habits, had given her the first place among her schoolmates.
The suggestion that the opportunity she sought might be found in Granville came from the Mary Bridgman to whom Squire Hadley referred. Mary was a dressmaker, born and reared in Granville, who had come to New York to establish herself there in her line of business. Mabel Fairfax had for years been one of her customers, and — as sometimes happens with society girls and their dressmakers — had made her a confidante. And so it happened that Mary was the first person to whom Miss Fairfax told her resolution to do something useful.
“But tell me,” she added, “what shall I do? You are practical. You know me well. What am I fit for?”
“I hardly know what to say, Miss Fairfax,” said the dressmaker. “Your training would interfere with many things you are capable of doing. I can do but one thing.”
“And that you do well.”
“I think I do,” said Mary, with no false modesty. “I have found my path in life. It would be too humble for you.”
“Not too humble. I don’t think I have any pride of that kind; but I never could tolerate the needle. I haven’t the patience, I suppose.”