, but the day of women typewriters had as yet scarcely begun
to dawn, else I think Molly would have preferred this occupation to the
handkerchiefs and the preserves.

There were people in Bennington who "wondered how Miss Wood could go
about from house to house teaching the piano, and she a lady." There
always have been such people, I suppose, because the world must always
have a rubbish heap. But we need not dwell upon them further than to
mention one other remark of theirs regarding Molly. They all with one
voice declared that Sam Bannett was good enough for anybody who did
fancy embroidery at five cents a letter.

"I dare say he had a great-grandmother quite as good as hers," remarked
Mrs. Flynt, the wife of the Baptist minister.

"That's entirely possible," returned the Episcopal rector of Hoosic,
"only we don't happen to know who she was." The rector was a friend of
Molly's. After this little observation, Mrs. Flynt said no more, but
continued her purchases in the store where she and the rector had
happened to find themselves together. Later she stated to a friend that
she had always thought the Episcopal Church a snobbish one, and now she
knew it.

So public opinion went on being indignant over Molly's conduct. She
could stoop to work for money, and yet she pretended to hold herself
above the most rising young man in Hoosic Falls, and all just because
there was a difference in their grandmothers!

Was this the reason at the bottom of it? The very bottom? I cannot be
certain, because I have never been a girl myself. Perhaps she thought
that work is not a stooping, and that marriage may be. Perhaps--But all
I really know is that Molly Wood continued cheerfully to embroider
the handkerchiefs, make the preserves, teach the pupils--and firmly to
reject Sam Bannett.

Thus it went on until she was twenty. There certain members of her
family began to tell her how rich Sam was going to be--was, indeed,
already. It was at this time that she wrote Mrs. Balaam her doubts and
her desires as to migrating to Bear Creek. It was at this time also
that her face grew a little paler, and her friends thought that she was
overworked, and Mrs. Flynt feared she was losing her looks. It was at
this time, too, that she grew very intimate with that great-aunt over at
Dunbarton, and from her received much comfort and strengthening.

"Never!" said the old lady, "especially if you can't love him."

"I do like him," said Molly; "and he