Всего за 5.99 руб. Купить полную версию
who had asked no questions and were more desirous of obtaining their favourite author's autograph, opened theirs to enclose an envelope, stamped and addressed; but few more letters of the kind went out from Lloydsboro Seminary after that.
Kitty, Katie, Allison, Betty, and Lloyd all pounced upon Miss Edith one morning before school, each with an album in her hand. Miss Edith clutched her hair in mock despair. "These make the seventh dozen I have been asked to write in this week," she declared. "Life is too short to hunt up a different sentiment for each one. I must use the same verse for everybody."
The girls perched on the desks around the rostrum, as she spread out the books before her and began to write. They always loved the few moments they could snatch in Miss Edith's room before school, and felt that her autograph would be one of the most valuable in the collection.
"This is one of my favourite verses," said Miss Edith, as she passed the blotter over the last page, and read it aloud:
"Nobody had the heart to tell them that there was no room for students who could not pay their way, neither could any one turn away such ambition. But the school was poor. It is kept up by donations from benevolent people, and it was only by great self-sacrifice that the teachers could take them at all.
"The following vacation, while I was at the sea-shore, I had a letter from this friend, and happened to speak of it and the two girls to a wealthy lady whom I met there. She seemed so interested that I read her my friend's letters. They were so full of the struggles and hardships of those mountain people that she was greatly interested and touched, and began corresponding with the principal of the school herself. The outcome of it was that she sent a check for ten thousand dollars to endow scholarships. Of course these two girls were the first to be benefited by the gift, and next June they will be graduated from the school with honour, fitted to become teachers themselves, far in advance of the time it would have taken had they been obliged to work their way through. Instead of plodding along, using the greater part of their time and strength in laundry work or sewing, they could go on with the college course uninterrupted. They are going to start a school themselves in the mountains, nearer their own home.
"Now that lady never saw those girls, and they were as unconscious that their influence was touching a life a thousand miles away as that tree out yonder, throwing its shadow across on the Clovercroft lawn. They simply stood in their places and reached out as far as they possibly could after what was good and high and worthy in life; but for years and years to come, students who profit by that endowment will be grateful for the shadow cast by those two ambitious girls."
Miss Edith never preached. She did not go on to tell them, as Miss McCannister would have done, that they were responsible not only for the influence of their daily living upon others, but for the effect their shadow-selves might cast on others far beyond their reach. She only pointed to the flaming red leaves of a gum-tree outside the window, and the shadow swaying partly on the high picket fence, and partly across the Clovercroft lawn, then passed the albums back with a smile. Then the girls filed slowly out to chapel.
It was a warm October day, and as Allison took her seat by an open window in the history class an hour later, she found it hard to fix her thoughts on the old French and Indian wars. It was so much pleasanter to look with dreamy eyes through the haze of the Indian summer, which Mom Beck said was the ghost-smoke from the peace-pipes of old dead and gone chieftains.
She
watched the slow fluttering to earth of the pale yellow maple leaves, and listened to the soft rustling of the gorgeous red leaves on the gum-tree to which Miss Edith had pointed. Once or twice she started, recalling her thoughts to the history lesson with an effort as she remembered the girls who were hungry enough for an education to walk forty miles for it and work for their board. She thought vaguely how eagerly they would have improved their opportunities had they been in her place. They would have taken a lively interest in the old wars, instead of sitting in idle day-dreams.
All at once, as Allison watched the swaying of the gum-tree's shadow on the fence and lawn, a thought came to her that made her seize a pencil and a piece of paper. Writing notes was forbidden in Miss McCannister's classes, but Allison could not wait until recess to share her brilliant thought with Lloyd. With her big eyes fixed innocently on Miss Bina's fishy ones, she scribbled slowly on the paper without once looking down: "Let's form a Shadow Club, with Miss Edith's verse for a motto. A. W. "
It took much manœuvring to succeed in passing the slip of paper to Lloyd, who sat several seats in front. When it finally reached her she did not dare turn round to nod a pleased assent, but Allison knew that her suggestion was received favourably, for Lloyd's hand at once went up to readjust the bow at the back of her hair, and two fingers wagged violently for an instant out of Miss Bina's sight. Had it been her thumb, Allison would have interpreted the signal to mean no; but from the rapid wagging of the two fingers she knew that Lloyd was much pleased with the idea.