"I have been there a year, and I trust when I came away I left light
behind."

"_Oh_ yes."

"At present I have no situation, though I have one in view. They are
most anxious to have me, but I say to myself, '_Will_ I do the most good
there? Is it a place where my influence will carry the most weight?' For
we should all do the best we can with our talents, it is a duty; I do
the best I can with mine."

"Oh _yes_, I reckon so. And you speak so beautifully too. Perhaps you've
spoken?--I mean before people?"

"Never in public," answered the other voice, reprovingly; "to my
pupils, but never in public. I think a woman should always keep her life
secluded, she should be the comfort and the ornament of a purely private
home. _We_ do not exhibit our charms--which should be sacred to the
privacy of the boudoir--in the glare of lecture-rooms; _we_ prefer to
be, and to _remain_, the low-voiced, retiring mothers of a race of giant
sons whom the Muse of History will immortalize in the characters of
soldier, statesman, and divine."

"Oh yes," said the girl's voice again, in good-natured, if inattentive,
acquiescence.

Winthrop glanced back. The young girl was charmingly pretty, with a
sweet indifference in her eyes. The older woman--she was over fifty--was
of a martial aspect, broad-shouldered, large-boned, and tall; her upper
lip was that of a warrior, her high cheek-bones had an air of resolute
determination. Comfort and ornament of a purely private home, as she had
just proclaimed herself, it seemed almost as if her powers would be
wasted there; she was a woman to lead an army through a breach without
flinching. The giant sons in her case were presumably imaginary, for she
gave her name to her companion as they parted: "Miss Louisa Mearns--they
_call_ me Lulette." Her voice was very soft and sweet.

"Southerner, of course, with those lovely tones," was Winthrop's mental
comment as she passed, stepping rather delicately, and, tall as she was,
without any stride. "But she's got a thorough soul of Maine, though she
doesn't dream of it. There must have been transmigration somewhere among
her ancestors." And then from sheer weariness and restlessness he went
into another car.

His feeling was that this train would be in North Carolina a week. But
it got on. It traversed South Carolina and Georgia, it passed through
the cotton country, it crossed beautiful rivers rolling slowly towards
the sea, then it made a wide detour ro