her dismissal became
certain. Then she put on her coat, and walked to the postoffice to post
the letter, for she resolved that there could be no shame without reason
for it. There was a little more color in her cheeks, and she held her
head high, preparing to be slighted. But she was not slighted, and got
more salutations, if anything, than usual. She was, indeed, in the right
not to hide her head, and policy alone would have forbade it, had Cynthia
thought of policy.

CHAPTER XV

Public opinion is like the wind--it bloweth where it listeth. It whistled
around Brampton the next day, whirling husbands and wives apart, and
families into smithereens. Brampton had a storm all to itself--save for a
sympathetic storm raging in Coniston--and all about a school-teacher.

Had Cynthia been a certain type of woman, she would have had all the men
on her side and all of her own sex against her. It is a decided point to
be recorded in her favor that she had among her sympathizers as many
women as men. But the excitement of a day long remembered in Brampton
began, for her, when a score or more of children assembled in front of
the little house, tramping down the snow on the grass plots, shouting for
her to come to school with them. Children give no mortgages, or keep no
hardware stores.

Cynthia, trying to read in front of the fire, was all in a tremble at the
sound of the high-pitched little voices she had grown to love, and she
longed to go out and kiss them, every one. Her nature, however, shrank
from any act which might appear dramatic or sensational. She could not
resist going to the window and smiling at them, though they appeared but
dimly--little dancing figures in a mist. And when they shouted, the more
she shook her head and put her finger to her lips in reproof and vanished
from their sight. Then they trooped sadly on to school, resolved to make
matters as disagreeable as possible for poor Miss Bruce, who had not
offended in any way.

Two other episodes worthy of a place in this act of the drama occurred
that morning, and one had to do with Ephraim. Poor Ephraim! His way had
ever been to fight and ask no questions, and in his journey through the
world he had gathered but little knowledge of it. He had limped home the
night before in a state of anger of which Cynthia had not believed him
capable, and had reappeared in the sitting room in his best suit of blue.

"Where are you going, Cousin Eph?" Cynthia had asked