roll."

The name meant nothing to Evelyn. It would have meant much to Nancy
Brooks.

"How did you happen to come here? I don't see how any one could choose to
come."

"My mother died--and there was no one but my Great-uncle Rodman Warfield.
I had to get something to do--so I came here, and Uncle Rod went to live
with a married cousin."

Evelyn had perched herself on the post of Anne's bed and was mending the
flounce. Although she was not near the lamp, she gave an effect of
gathering to her all the light of the room. She was wrapped in a robe of
rose-color, a strange garment with fur to set it off, and of enormous
fullness. It spread about her and billowed out until it almost hid the
little bed and the child upon it.

Beside her, Anne in her blue serge felt clumsy and common. She knew that
she ought not to feel that way, but she did. She would have told her
scholars that it was not clothes that made the man, or dress the woman.
But then she told her scholars many things that were right and good. She
tried herself to be as right and good as her theories. But it was not
always possible. It was not possible at this moment.

"What brought you here?" Eve persisted.

"I teach school. I came in September."

"What do you teach?"

"Everything. We are not graded."

"I hope you teach them to be honest with themselves."

"I am not sure that I know what you mean?"

"Don't let them pretend to be something that they are not. That's why so
many people fail. They reach too high, and fall. That's what Nancy Brooks
is doing to Richard. She is making him reach too high."

She laughed as she bent above her needle. "I fancy you are not interested
in that. But I can't think of anything but--the waste of it. I hope you
will all be so healthy that you won't need him, and then he will have to
come back to New York."

"I don't see how anybody could leave New York. Not to come down here."
Anne drew a quick breath.

Eve spoke carelessly: "Oh, well, I suppose it isn't so bad here for a
woman, but for a man--a man needs big spaces. Richard will be
cramped--he'll shrink to the measure of all this--narrowness." She had
finished her flounce, and she rose and gave Anne the needle. "In the
morning, if the weather is good, we are to ride to Crossroads. Is your
school very far away?"

"It is opposite Crossroads. Mrs. Brooks' father built it."

Anne spoke stiffly. She had felt the sting of Eve's indifference, and she
was furious with h