uld be
difficult."

"It's plain to be seen," Mrs. Claxon interposed, "that she thinks a good
deal of her money; and I d' know but what she'd think she was doin' Clem
most too much of a favor anyway. If it can't be a puffectly even thing,
all round, I d' know as I should want it to be at all."

"You're quite right, Mrs. Claxon, quite right. But I believe Mrs. Lander
may be safely left to look out for her own interests. After all, she has
merely asked Clementina to pass the winter with her. It will be a good
opportunity for her to see something of the world; and perhaps it may
bring her the chance of placing herself in life. We have got to consider
these things with reference to a young girl."

Mrs. Claxon said, "Of cou'se," but Claxon did not assent so readily.

"I don't feel as if I should want Clem to look at it in that light. If
the chance don't come to her, I don't want she should go huntin' round
for it."

"I thoroughly agree with you," said the rector. "But I was thinking that
there was not only no chance worthy of her in Middlemount, but there is
no chance at all."

"I guess that's so," Claxon owned with a laugh. "Well, I guess we can
leave it to Clem to do what's right and proper everyway. As you say,
she's got lots of sense."

From that moment he emptied his mind of care concerning the matter; but
husband and wife are never both quite free of care on the same point of
common interest, and Mrs. Claxon assumed more and more of the anxieties
which he had abandoned. She fretted under the load, and expressed an
exasperated tenderness for Clementina when the girl seemed forgetful of
any of the little steps to be taken before the great one in getting her
clothes ready for leaving home. She said finally that she presumed they
were doing a wild thing, and that it looked crazier and crazier the more
she thought of it; but all was, if Clem didn't like, she could come home.
By this time her husband was in something of that insensate eagerness to
have the affair over that people feel in a house where there is a
funeral.

At the station, when Clementina started for Boston with Mrs. Lander, her
father and mother, with the rector and his wife, came to see her off.
Other friends mistakenly made themselves of the party, and kept her
talking vacuities when her heart was full, till the train drew up. Her
father went with her into the parlor car, where the porter of the
Middlemount House set down Mrs. Lander's hand baggage