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Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson
page 100 of 806 (12%)
free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel,
Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career,
but she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who
felt her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing,
said: "Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the
fact that such an emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from
the mild-tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other
member of the family took Johanna's part. So she buried her ambitions,
and kept her mother's house in an admirable, methodical way.

It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna adored
her little sister, and would cheerfully have given up more than this
for her sake. Ephie, who was at that time just emerging from
childhood, was very pretty and precocious, and her mother had great
hopes of her. She also tired early of her lesson-books, and, soon
after she turned sixteen, declared her intention of leaving school. As
at least a couple of years had still to elapse before she was old
enough to be introduced in society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one
decisive step of her life, determined that travel in Europe should put
the final touches to Ephie's education: a little German and French;
some finishing lessons on the violin; a run through Italy and
Switzerland, and then to Paris, whence they would carry back with them
a complete and costly outfit. So, valiantly, Mrs. Cayhill had her
trunks packed, and, together with Johanna, who would as soon
have thought of denying her age as of letting these two helpless
beings go out into the world alone, they crossed the Atlantic.

For some three months now, they had been established in Leipzig. A
circulating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs.
Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that the
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