The time so long and eagerly waited forhad come, and Rebecca was a student atWareham. Persons who had enjoyed thesocial bewilderments and advantages of foreigncourts, or had mingled freely in the intellectualcircles of great universities, might not have lookedupon Wareham as an extraordinary experience;but it was as much of an advance upon Riverboroas that village had been upon Sunnybrook Farm.
Rebecca's intention was to complete the fouryears' course in three, as it was felt by all theparties concerned that when she had attained the ripeage of seventeen she must be ready to earn herown living and help in the education of the youngerchildren. While she was wondering how this couldbe successfully accomplished, some of the othergirls were cogitating as to how they could meanderthrough the four years and come out at the endknowing no more than at the beginning. Thiswould seem a difficult, well-nigh an impossible task,but it can be achieved, and has been, at other seatsof learning than modest little Wareham.
Rebecca was to go to and fro on the cars dailyfrom September to Christmas, and then board inWareham during the three coldest months. EmmaJane's parents had always thought that a year ortwo in the Edgewood high school (three miles fromRiverboro) would serve every purpose for theirdaughter and send her into the world with as finean intellectual polish as she could well sustain.
Emma Jane had hitherto heartily concurred inthis opinion, for if there was any one thing thatshe detested it was the learning of lessons. Onebook was as bad as another in her eyes, and shecould have seen the libraries of the world sinkinginto ocean depths and have eaten her dinner cheerfullythe while; but matters assumed a differentcomplexion when she was sent to Edgewood andRebecca to Wareham. She bore it for a week--seven endless days of absence from the belovedobject, whom she could see only in the eveningswhen both were busy with their lessons. Sundayoffered an opportunity to put the matter beforeher father, who proved obdurate. He didn'tbelieve in education and thought she had full enoughalready. He never intended to keep up "blacksmithing"for good when he leased his farm andcame into Riverboro, but proposed to go back toit presently, and by that time Emma Jane wouldhave finished school and would be ready to helpher mother with the dairy work.
Another week passed. Emma Jane pined visiblyand audibly. Her color faded, and her appetite(at table) dwindled almost to nothing.
Her mother alluded plaintively to the fact thatthe Perkinses had a habit of going into declines;that she'd always feared that Emma Jane'scomplexion was too beautiful to be healthy; that somemen would be proud of having an ambitious daughter,and be glad to give her the best advantages;that she feared the daily journeys to Edgewoodwere going to be too much for her own health,and Mr. Perkins would have to hire a boy to driveEmma Jane; and finally that when a girl had sucha passion for learning as Emma Jane, it seemedalmost like wickedness to cross her will.
Mr. Perkins bore this for several days until histemper, digestion, and appetite were all sensiblyaffected; then he bowed his head to the inevitable,and Emma Jane flew, like a captive set free, to theloved one's bower. Neither did her courage flag,although it was put to terrific tests when she enteredthe academic groves of Wareham. She passed inonly two subjects, but went cheerfully into thepreparatory department with her five "conditions,"intending to let the stream of education play gentlyover her mental surfaces and not get any wetter thanshe could help. It is not possible to blink the truththat Emma Jane was dull; but a dogged, unswervingloyalty, and the gift of devoted, unselfish loving,these, after all, are talents of a sort, and maypossibly be of as much value in the world as a senseof numbers or a faculty for languages.
Wareham was a pretty village with a broad mainstreet shaded by great maples and elms. It had anapothecary, a blacksmith, a plumber, several shopsof one sort and another, two churches, and manyboarding-houses; but all its interests gathered aboutits seminary and its academy. These seats of learningwere neither better nor worse than others oftheir kind, but differed much in efficiency, accordingas the principal who chanced to be at the head wasa man of power and inspiration or the reverse.
There were boys and girls gathered from all partsof the county and state, and they were of everykind and degree as to birth, position in the world,wealth or poverty. There was an opportunity for adeal of foolish and imprudent behavior, but on thewhole surprisingly little advantage was taken of it.
Among the third and fourth year students therewas a certain amount of going to and from thetrains in couples; some carrying of heavy booksup the hill by the sterner sex for their feminineschoolmates, and occasional bursts of silliness onthe part of heedless and precocious girls, amongwhom was Huldah Meserve. She was friendlyenough with Emma Jane and Rebecca, but grewless and less intimate as time went on. She wasextremely pretty, with a profusion of auburn hair,and a few very tiny freckles, to which sheconstantly alluded, as no one could possibly detectthem without noting her porcelain skin and hercurling lashes. She had merry eyes, a somewhattoo plump figure for her years, and was popularlysupposed to have a fascinating way with her.
Riverboro being poorly furnished with beaux, sheintended to have as good a time during her fouryears at Wareham as circumstances would permit.
Her idea of pleasure was an ever-changing circleof admirers to fetch and carry for her, the morepublicly the better; incessant chaff and laughterand vivacious conversation, made eloquent andeffective by arch looks and telling glances. Shehad a habit of confiding her conquests to lessfortunate girls and bewailing the incessant havoc anddamage she was doing; a damage she avowedherself as innocent of, in intention, as any new-bornlamb. It does not take much of this sort of thingto wreck an ordinary friendship, so before longRebecca and Emma Jane sat in one end of therailway train in going to and from Riverboro, andHuldah occupied the other with her court.
Sometimes this was brilliant beyond words, includinga certain youthful Monte Cristo, who on Fridaysexpended thirty cents on a round trip ticket andtraveled from Wareham to Riverboro merely to benear Huldah; sometimes, too, the circle was reducedto the popcorn-and-peanut boy of the train, whoseemed to serve every purpose in default of bettergame.
Rebecca was in the normally unconscious statethat belonged to her years; boys were good comrades,but no more; she liked reciting in the sameclass with them, everything seemed to move better;but from vulgar and precocious flirtations she wasprotected by her ideals. There was little in thelads she had met thus far to awaken her fancy, forit habitually fed on better meat. Huldah's school-girl romances, with their wealth of commonplacedetail, were not the stuff her dreams were made of,when dreams did flutter across the sensitive plate ofher mind.
Among the teachers at Wareham was one whoinfluenced Rebecca profoundly, Miss Emily Maxwell,with whom she studied English literature andcomposition. Miss Maxwell, as the niece of oneof Maine's ex-governors and the daughter of one ofBowdoin's professors, was the most remarkablepersonality in Wareham, and that her few years ofteaching happened to be in Rebecca's time was thehappiest of all chances. There was no indecision ordelay in the establishment of their relations;Rebecca's heart flew like an arrow to its mark, andher mind, meeting its superior, settled at once intoan abiding attitude of respectful homage.
It was rumored that Miss Maxwell "wrote,"which word, when uttered in a certain tone, wasunderstood to mean not that a person had commandof penmanship, Spencerian or otherwise, but thatshe had appeared in print.
"You'll like her; she writes," whispered Huldahto Rebecca the first morning at prayers, where thefaculty sat in an imposing row on the front seats.
"She writes; and I call her stuck up."Nobody seemed possessed of exact informationwith which to satisfy the hungry mind, but there wasbelieved to be at least one person in existence whohad seen, with his own eyes, an essay by MissMaxwell in a magazine. This height of achievementmade Rebecca somewhat shy of her, but she lookedher admiration; something that most of the classcou............