n the floodgates of surprise and emotion were opened, and she began to
talk of her hopes and fears, it was but natural that she should speak of
her struggles for personal improvement, though this was instinctively done
when Mr. Hornby was absent.

Curiously enough, some of her points of information were as helpful to
Susan Hornby as they had been to her. Mrs. Hornby knew the rules of good
grammar, but many little observances of table manners had changed since
her youth. She read and was well informed on general topics of the day,
but her life for more than fifteen years had been spent with Nathan and
with the hired men who ate at her table, and she had become careless of
small things, so that she listened with an amused smile, but with real
profit as well, to Lizzie's confidences that "You shouldn't cross your
knife and fork on your plate when you are through eating, like the hired
men, but lay them side by side, neat and straight"; that "You shouldn't
eat with your knife, neither," and that "To sip your coffee out of your
saucer with a noise like grasshoppers' wings was just awful!" She, too,
was brushing up to go to Topeka, and while much in advance of her husband
or any of her associates in society matters, she had lived the life of the
farm, and to the end of her existence would be conscious of the
inequalities of her education. Of this she said nothing to the child, but
listened and remembered. Occasionally she reminded the girl that they
might not go to Topeka, but even as she warned she was quickening the
subconscious mind to aid in recording any fact which might be advantageous
when she herself got there, and her love for the child grew. The girl was
part of the scheme. In a week she had become one of the family.

At the end of the week Mr. Farnshaw did not appear; farm matters had
detained him, so that the opportunity for a closer acquaintance with his
daughter was permitted. Under Mrs. Hornby the child blossomed naturally.
The old-fashioned secretary was the young girl's delight. Seeing her
shaking in silent glee over "David Copperfield" one night, and remembering
her eager pursuit of intellectual things, Mrs. Hornby remarked to her
husband, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The world of to-day
would add to Susan Hornby's little speech, "Not only as a man thinketh in
his heart, so is he," but "So shall he live, and do, and be surrounded."
This simple daughter of the farm, the herds, and the homesteade