She isn't any annoyance. Then she is so deft, so dainty. She touches
books with the lightest of fingers. She will sit and look at pictures,
and it quite surprises me how much she knows about geography."

"And nothing much about her native country. She can't tell the
difference between Pilgrims and Puritans. And she didn't know why we
came over here, and why it was not the same God in England, and if all
the gods in India were idols. Chilian, you shouldn't encourage her
irreverence. It looks pert in a child."

"She will get over these ways as she grows older and mingles with other
children."

"That is what I am coming to. She ought to begin at once. Betty Upham
goes to Dame Wilby. Her mother considers it excellent for small
children. She could go with Betty and there would be no fear of her
trailing off no one knows where."

Of course, she ought to go to school. He could manage a big boy on the
verge of manhood very well. But this woman-child puzzled him. She seemed
very tractable, obedient in a certain sense, yet in the end she seemed
to get, or to take, her own way. Suppressing one train of action opened
another. She had a sweet way of yielding, but a strong way of holding
on. A little thing made her happy, yet in her deepest happiness there
was much gravity. His theories were that certain qualities brought to
pass certain results. He forgot that there were no such things as pure
temperaments, and that environments made second nature different from
what the first might have been. The child puzzled him by her
contrariety, yet she was not a troublesome child.

"Well;" reluctantly.

"I'll see the Dame. And we will start her on Monday."

He nodded.

Elizabeth had another point to gain. She looked over her trunk of
pieces. Here were several yards of brown and white gingham, quite enough
for a frock without any furbelows. With the roll in her hand she tapped
at the partly open door. Rachel had laid out on the bed several white
frocks, plain enough even for Salem tastes.

"Cynthia's going to school on Monday," she announced. "And I thought
this would make her a good school frock. It won't be dirtysome. You see
children here _do_ dress differently. You'll get into the ways."

Rachel looked at the gingham. "I shouldn't like it for her," she said
quietly. "Her father always wanted to see her in white. That is new
every time it is washed. These things fade and then look so wretched.
Beside she will only outgrow these