circumstances
would have gone into a shop at once, but a Clark ought to have a better
education in deference to her expectations. The heiress of Clark's Field
must never conclude her education with the grades.... So finally it was
decided that Adelle should enter the high school for a year, at any
rate, and to that end a new school dress of sober blue serge was
provided, made by Adelle with her aunt's assistance.

These days Adelle rose at an early hour to do the chamber work while her
aunt got breakfast, then changed her dress, looked hurriedly over her
lessons, gobbled her breakfast, and with her books and a tin lunch-box
strapped together set forth to walk the mile and a half to the high
school in order to save car-fare. There she performed her daily tasks in
a perfunctory, dead manner, not uncommon. Once an exasperated teacher
had demanded testily,--

"Miss Clark, don't you ever think?"

The timid child had answered seriously,--

"Yes, sometimes I think."

Whereat the class tittered and Adelle had a mild sensation of dislike
for the irascible teacher, who reported in "teachers' meeting" that
Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be
and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils
to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Caesar, and Greek
history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They
were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from
within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor
memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social
science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some
response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked
was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. Adelle danced very
well, as if she were aware of being alive when she danced. But even the
athletic young woman who had the gymnasium classes reported that Adelle
Clark was too dull, too lifeless, to succeed as a dancer or athletic
teacher. These public guardians of youth may or may not have been right
in their judgments, but certainly as yet the girl had not "waked up"....

Adelle's high-school career was interrupted in January, just as she had
turned fifteen, by her aunt's sickness. For the first time in forty
years, as the widow told the doctor, she had taken to her bed. "Time to
make up for all the good loafing you have missed," the young doctor