onely days for Mary-'Gusta also, those of that first month
at Mrs. Wyeth's and at the Misses Cabot's school. For the first time in
her life she realized what it meant to be homesick. But in the letters
which she wrote to her uncles not a trace of the homesickness was
permitted to show and little by little its keenest pangs wore away. She,
too, was thankful for work, for the study which kept her from thinking
of other things.

The Misses Cabot--their Christian names were Priscilla and Hortense--she
found to be middle-aged maiden ladies, eminently prim and proper,
and the educational establishment over which they presided a sort of
Protestant nunnery ruled according to the precepts of the Congregational
Church and the New England aristocracy. Miss Priscilla was tall and thin
and her favorite author was Emerson; she quoted Emerson extensively and
was certain that real literature died when he did. Miss Hortense
was younger, plumper, and more romantic. She quoted Longfellow and
occasionally Oliver Wendell Holmes, although she admitted she considered
the latter rather too frivolous at times. Both sisters were learned,
dignified, and strict disciplinarians. Also, in the eyes of both a male
person younger than forty-five was labeled "Danger--Keep Away." But
one creature of the masculine gender taught in their school; he was
white-haired Doctor Barnes, professor of the dead languages. It was the
prevailing opinion among the scholars that Doctor Barnes, when at home,
occupied an apartment in the Greek Antiquity section of the Art Museum,
where he slept and ate surrounded by the statues and busts of his
contemporaries.

As for the scholars themselves, there were about forty of them,
girls--or young ladies: the Misses Cabot invariably referred to
and addressed them as "young ladies"--from Boston and New York and
Philadelphia, even from Chicago and as far south as Baltimore. Almost
all were the daughters of well-to-do parents, almost all had their homes
in cities. There were very few who, like Mary-'Gusta, had lived all
their lives in the country. Some were pretty, some were not; some were
giddy and giggly, some solemn and studious, some either according to
mood; some were inclined to be snobbish, others simple and "everyday."
In short, the school was like almost any school of its kind.

Mary-'Gusta entered this school and, doing so, ceased to be Mary-'Gusta,
becoming Miss Lathrop to her instructors and Mary to her intimates among