or you to see something of the
world, and you are bright enough to do anything you set out to do. I
have written to Mr. Kendall to do all he can for you, and with Tom to
take care of you I am sure you will get along. I begin to suspect that
your going away was a thing contrived between Tom and yourself. Who
knows how soon he may bring you back among us to show the Sandy farmers'
wives how to live more comfortably than some of them do? Tom has a very
pretty place below the mouth of Blackberry, if you would only show him
how to take care of it."

There was comfort in this letter, in spite of the tears it caused me. My
secret was safe. Miss Hammond had not been so cruel, so traitorous to
her sex, as to betray it. If she had not told it now, she never would
tell it, and Tom, if he suspected it, was too good, too noble, to
whisper it even to himself. So I laid away my letter, and with a lighter
heart turned again to my tasks.

And now three months have passed, for two of which I have been teaching.
There are difficulties, yes, and there is hard work; but I can manage
the children. I have the tact, the character, the gift, that nameless
something which gives one person control over others; and for the
studies, they are as yet a pleasure to me. I see how they will lead me
on to other knowledge, how I may bring into form and make available my
desultory reading, and there is a great pleasure in the very study
itself. And for the rest, if my great grief is never out of my mind, if
it is always present to me, at least I can put it back, behind my daily
occupations and interests. I begin, too, to see dimly that there are
other things in life for a woman to whom the light of life is denied. My
heart will always be lonely; but how much there is to live for in my
mind, my tastes, my love for the beautiful! My little room has taken
another aspect. I have so few wants that I can readily devote part of my
earnings to gratifying myself with books, pictures. Such lovely prints
as I find in the print-shops! and the flowers--Tom Salyers, who is as
kind as a brother, brings me them from the market. And then everything
is so new to me; there is so much in life to see, to know. No, I will
not be unhappy; happy I suppose I can never be, but I have strength and
courage, and a will to rise above this sorrow which once crushed me to
the ground. When I wrote the bitter words with which this record begins,
I wronged the kind hearts that are around m