they had yielded more readily because the experiment had so far
succeeded. Clementina had apparently no complaint to make of Mrs. Lander;
she was eager to go, and the rector and his wife, who had been invited to
be of the council, were both of the opinion that a course of European
travel would be of the greatest advantage to the girl, if she wished to
fit herself for teaching. It was an opportunity that they must not think
of throwing away. If Mrs. Lander went to Florence, as it seemed from
Clementina's letter she thought of doing, the girl would pass a
delightful winter in study of one of the most interesting cities in the
world, and she would learn things which would enable her to do better for
herself when she came home than she could ever hope to do otherwise. She
might never marry, Mr. Richling suggested, and it was only right and fair
that she should be equipped with as much culture as possible for the
struggle of life; Mrs. Richling agreed with this rather vague theory, but
she was sure that Clementina would get married to greater advantage in
Florence than anywhere else. They neither of them really knew anything at
first hand about Florence; the rector's opinion was grounded on the
thought of the joy that a sojourn in Italy would have been to him; his
wife derived her hope of a Florentine marriage for Clementina from
several romances in which love and travel had gone hand in hand, to the
lasting credit of triumphant American girlhood.

The Claxons were not able to enter into their view of the case, but if
Mrs. Lander wanted to go to Florence instead of Florida they did not see
why Clementina should not go with her to one place as well as the other.
They were not without a sense of flattery from the fact that their
daughter was going to Europe; but they put that as far from them as they
could, the mother severely and the father ironically, as something too
silly, and they tried not to let it weigh with them in making up their
mind, but to consider only Clementina's best good, and not even to regard