discovered that none were so ignorant as not to be able to
communicate some little item of knowledge to which I had been a
stranger.

There was a lady among these pupils who was in many respects very
different from all the others. I think her age must have been at least
thirty-five. I did not ask if it were so; and as she never mentioned it
herself, that circumstance was hint enough for me to remain silent. I
never could understand why so many women are so amusingly anxious to
conceal their age, sometimes becoming quite affronted when even a
conjecture is hazarded on the subject. This lady was unmarried; perhaps
that may have been one reason for her unwillingness to speak of her age.
But was not I unmarried, and what repugnance have I ever felt to avowing
mine?

However, Miss Hawley was extremely sociable with me, though certainly
old enough to be my mother, and made me the depositary of many incidents
in her life. She was the eldest of three sisters, all orphans, all
unmarried, all dependent on themselves for a living, and all, at one
time, so absurdly proud, that, in the struggle to keep up appearances,
and conceal from their acquaintances the fact that they were doing this
or that thing for a maintenance, they subjected themselves to privations
which embarrassed much of their efforts, while they failed to secure the
concealment they sought. Though women of undoubted sense and excellent
education, yet they acted as foolishly as the ostrich, which, when
hunted to cover, thrusts his head into a bush, and is weak enough to
think that his whole body is concealed, when it stands out not only a
target, but a fixed one, for the hunter's rifle. So these women took it
for granted, that, if they ran to the cover of a chamber from which all
visitors should be excluded, their acquaintances would be ignorant of
how they occupied their time, or by what means they lived.

Yet they could not fail to be aware that everybody who knew anything of
them knew their history also,--that it was notorious that their father,
a merchant, had died not worth a cent, and that they had been compelled
to abandon the fine house in which he had kept up a style so expensive
as greatly to increase the hardship of their subsequent destitution.
Like a thousand others, he had lived up to the limit of his income. No
doubt, all of them might have been well married, but for the lavish
habits as to fashion and expenditure in which they indulged themselves.