d that he would drive her in the Farley
chaise to Clara Morse's wedding. A seven-mile drive is apt to promote or
kill the germs of intimacy, and on the way over she had been conscious
of enjoying herself. Scrutiny of Clara's choice had been to the
advantage of her own cavalier. The bridegroom had seemed to her what her
Aunt Farley would call a mouse-in-the-cheese young man. Whereas Babcock
had been the life of the affair.

She had been teaching now in Wilton for more than a year. When, shortly
after her father's death, she had obtained the position of school
teacher, it seemed to her that at last the opportunity had come to
display her capabilities, and at the same time to fulfil her
aspirations. But the task of grounding a class of small children in the
rudiments of simple knowledge had already begun to pall and to seem
unsatisfying. Was she to spend her life in this? And if not, the next
step, unless it were marriage, was not obvious. Not that she mistrusted
her ability to shine in any educational capacity, but neither Wilton nor
the neighboring Westfield offered better, and she was conscious of a
lack of influential friends in the greater world, which was embodied for
her in Benham. Benham was a western city of these United States, with an
eastern exposure; a growing, bustling city according to rumor, with an
eager population restless with new ideas and stimulating ambitions. So
at least Selma thought of it, and though Boston and New York and a few
other places were accepted by her as authoritative, she accepted them,
as she accepted Shakespeare, as a matter of course and so far removed
from her immediate outlook as almost not to count. But Benham with its
seventy-five thousand inhabitants and independent ways was a fascinating
possibility. Once established there the world seemed within her grasp,
including Boston. Might it not be that Benham, in that it was newer, was
nearer to truth and more truly American than that famous city? She was
not prepared to believe this an absurdity.

At least the mental atmosphere of Westfield and even of the somewhat
less solemn Wilton suggested this apotheosis of the adjacent city to be
reasonable. Westfield had stood for Selma as a society of serious though
simple souls since she could first remember and had been one of them.
Not that she arrogated to her small native town any unusual qualities of
soul or mind in distinction from most other American communities, but
she regarded it