spaired of; all the story being told as she walked
up and down rapidly in the chamber, with the tears running down her
cheeks, and with a passionate vehemence I had never suspected her to
be capable of, since she had the most complete self-restraint I ever
knew in a woman. But it was an _impasse_--I neither could nor would
go back from the career decided upon, nor would the family have
consented, and to return to the workshop at my father's insistence was
to lose everything. It seemed brutal to refuse mother's entreaties
to ignore the collision of wills, and to go on as if nothing had
happened, but to do this and remain in the house with my father, in
the perpetual danger of another conflict, was impossible. The question
had to be settled, and all I could do was to insist on father's making
a distinct disavowal of any right or intention to demand my services
in the shop at any future time, and leaving me free to follow the
programme agreed on in the family council. It was in effect a frank
apology that I wanted, but I knew him too well to suppose he would
ever consent to make an apology in words, or to admit to me that he
had made a mistake; and I left the solution in my mother's hands, with
the understanding that the definite promise should be made to her,
and I knew too that this would hold him as completely as if made to a
public authority. Nothing could bring her to contradict him openly,
and in all my life I never saw her make a sign of disrespect for his
mastery in domestic things, but I knew that once this promise was made
to her I could count on his being held to it sternly.

That evening the matter was settled, but of what had passed, or what
was said, I never knew anything, for my mother never wasted words;
and, while no apology was made, or any retraction expressed, neither
my father nor myself ever alluded to the subject of my working in
the shop again, nor did I ever, as before, go into it during the
vacations, or offer to assist when affairs were hurried. The habit of
asserting the paternal authority and the sense of it, in my father,
were so strong that I never risked again reviving it.

CHAPTER IV

COLLEGE LIFE

I passed my examination and resumed my place in the class, but I never
tried district school-teaching again. Entering upon my junior year I
had a room in the north college. Each of the upper buildings--which
properly should have been called halls--was divided into five
sections, in e