held aloof from manhood until now. At least no youth in her neighborhood
had ever impressed her as her equal. Neither did Babcock so impress her;
but he was different from the rest. He was not shy and unexpressive; he
was buoyant and self-reliant, and yet he seemed to appreciate her
quality none the less.

They had met about a dozen times, and on the last six of these occasions
he had come from Benham, ten miles to her uncle's farm, obviously to
visit her. The last two times her Aunt Farley had made him spend the
night, and it had been arranged that he would drive her in the Farley
chaise to Clara Morse's wedding. A seven-mile drive is apt to promote or
kill the germs of intimacy, and on the way over she had been conscious
of enjoying herself. Scrutiny of Clara's choice had been to the
advantage of her own cavalier. The bridegroom had seemed to her what her
Aunt Farley would call a mouse-in-the-cheese young man. Whereas Babcock
had been the life of the affair.

She had been teaching now in Wilton for more than a year. When, shortly
after her father's death, she had obtained the position of school
teacher, it seemed to her that at last the opportunity had come to
display her capabilities, and at the same time to fulfil her
aspirations. But the task of grounding a class of small children in the
rudiments of simple knowledge had already begun to pall and to seem
unsatisfying. Was she to spend her life in this? And if not, the next
step, unless it were marriage, was not obvious. Not that she mistrusted
her ability to shine in any educational capacity, but neither Wilton nor
the neighboring Westfield offered better, and she was conscious of a
lack of influential friends in the greater world, which was embodied for
her in Benham. Benham was a western city of these United States, with an
eastern exposure; a growing, bustling city according to rumor, with an