hard to learn,
and now she found that all she seemed to have forgotten merely
required, like the books, a little beating clear of dust.

And Claude was there to help. "If C"----C!----"having a start of one
hundred miles, travels"--so and so, and so and so,--"how fast must I
travel in order to"--etc. She cannot work the problem for thinking of
what it symbolizes. As C himself takes the slate, her dark eyes,
lifted an instant to his, are large with painful meaning, for she sees
at a glance she must travel--if the arithmetical is the true
answer--more than the whole distance now between them. But Claude says
there is an easy way. She draws her chair nearer and nearer to his; he
bows over the problem, and she cannot follow his pencil without
bending her head very close to his--closer--closer--until fluffy bits
of her black hair touch the thick locks on his temples. Look to your
child, Zosephine Beausoleil, look to her! Ah! she can look; but what
can she do?

She saw the whole matter; saw more than merely an unripe girl
smitten with the bright smile, goodly frame, and bewitching eyes of
a promising young rustic; saw her heart ennobled, her nature
enlarged, and all the best motives of life suddenly illuminated by
the presence of one to be mated with whom promised the key-note of
all harmonies; promised heart-fellowship in the ever-hoping effort
to lift poor daily existence higher and higher out of the dust and
into the light. What could she say? If great spirits in men or
maidens went always or only with high fortune, a mere Acadian lass,
a tavern maiden, were safe enough, come one fate or another. If
Marguerite were like many a girl in high ranks and low, to whom any
husband were a husband, any snug roof a home, and any living
life--But what may a maiden do, or a mother bid her do, when she
looks upon the youth so shaped without and within to her young
soul's belief in its wants, that all other men are but beasts of the
field and creeping things, and he alone Adam? To whom could the
widow turn? Father, mother?--Gone to their rest. The cure who had
stood over her in baptism, marriage, and bereavement?--Called long
ago to higher dignities and wider usefulness in distant fields. Oh
for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! It is true, here was
Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and so replete with information; so shrewd and
so ready to advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; and
yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned.