d, a sigh escaped her, for the instruction of the young was
for her a matter not of choice, but of necessity. With the majority of
maiden ladies left destitute in Dinwiddie after the war, she had turned
naturally to teaching as the only nice and respectable occupation which
required neither preparation of mind nor considerable outlay of money.
The fact that she was the single surviving child of a gallant
Confederate general, who, having distinguished himself and his
descendants, fell at last in the Battle of Gettysburg, was sufficient
recommendation of her abilities in the eyes of her fellow citizens. Had
she chosen to paint portraits or to write poems, they would have rallied
quite as loyally to her support. Few, indeed, were the girls born in
Dinwiddie since the war who had not learned reading, penmanship ("up to
the right, down to the left, my dear"), geography, history, arithmetic,
deportment, and the fine arts, in the Academy for Young Ladies. The
brilliant military record of the General still shed a legendary lustre
upon the school, and it was earnestly believed that no girl, after
leaving there with a diploma for good conduct, could possibly go wrong
or become eccentric in her later years. To be sure, she might remain a
trifle weak in her spelling (Miss Priscilla having, as she confessed, a
poor head for that branch of study), but, after all, as the rector had
once remarked, good spelling was by no means a necessary accomplishment
for a lady; and, for the rest, it was certain that the moral education
of a pupil of the Academy would be firmly rooted in such fundamental
verities as the superiority of man and the aristocratic supremacy of the
Episcopal Church. From charming Sally Goode, now married to Tom
Peachey, known familiarly as "honest Tom," the editor of the Dinwiddie
_Bee_, to lovely Virginia Pendleton, the mark of Miss Priscilla was
ineffaceably impressed upon the daughters of the leading families.

Remembering this now, as she was disposed to do whenever she was
knitting without company, Miss Priscilla dropped her long wooden needles
in her lap, and leaning forward in her chair, gazed out upon the town
with an expression of child-like confidence, of touching innocence. This
innocence, which belonged to the very essence of her soul, had survived
both the fugitive joys and the brutal disillusionments of life.
Experience could not shatter it, for it was the product of a courage
that feared nothing except opini