d upon
Wareham as an extraordinary experience; but it was as much of an
advance upon Riverboro as that village had been upon Sunnybrook Farm.
Rebecca's intention was to complete the four years' course in three, as
it was felt by all the parties concerned that when she had attained the
ripe age of seventeen she must be ready to earn her own living and help
in the education of the younger children. While she was wondering how
this could be successfully accomplished, some of the other girls were
cogitating as to how they could meander through the four years and come
out at the end knowing no more than at the beginning. This would seem a
difficult, well-nigh an impossible task, but it can be achieved, and
has been, at other seats of learning than modest little Wareham.

Rebecca was to go to and fro on the cars daily from September to
Christmas, and then board in Wareham during the three coldest months.
Emma Jane's parents had always thought that a year or two in the
Edgewood high school (three miles from Riverboro) would serve every
purpose for their daughter and send her into the world with as fine an
intellectual polish as she could well sustain. Emma Jane had hitherto
heartily concurred in this opinion, for if there was any one thing that
she detested it was the learning of lessons. One book was as bad as
another in her eyes, and she could have seen the libraries of the world
sinking into ocean depths and have eaten her dinner cheerfully the
while; but matters assumed a different complexion when she was sent to
Edgewood and Rebecca to Wareham. She bore it for a week--seven endless
days of absence from the beloved object, whom she could see only in the
evenings when both were busy with their lessons. Sunday offered an
opportunity to put the matter before her father, who proved obdurate.
He didn't believe in education and thought she had full enough already.
He never intended to keep up "blacksmithing" for good when he leased
his farm and came into Riverboro, but proposed to go back to it
presently, and by that time Emma Jane would have finished school and
would be ready to help her mother with the dairy work.

Another week passed. Emma Jane pined visibly and audibly. Her color
faded, and her appetite (at table) dwindled almost to nothing.

Her mother alluded plaintively to the fact that the Perkinses had a
habit of going into declines; that she'd always feared that Emma Jane's
complexion was too beautiful to be healthy;