e, and I went back with a show
of courage. Nannie wrote me every week. I don't know just when I began
to feel a change in the letters, not in their affection or their gaiety;
but she no longer told me so much about her studies (for she wanted to
keep up with me and enter in the second year); after a while she hardly
mentioned them; yet she _had_ shown the keenest interest. My people came
on east for me that summer, and as we made several visits, it was late
in the summer when we came home. Although I had noticed this change in
Nannie's letters, I had not dreamed what it really meant; and I was not
prepared for the shock I received. She greeted me with all her old
affection; but at my first inquiry about her savings, she answered,
'Yes, I have enough--if I go.' 'If!' I cried. 'Don't be talking of
if's!' 'Indeed, I ought not,' she answered very gravely, 'for there is
no if about it; I know that I oughtn't to go. It isn't fair to the
others.' 'But they want you to go!' I pleaded in inexpressible dismay.
'It will be the awfulest disappointment!' It seems to me that I still
remember every word of her reply. She said that she knew it, that her
education had been the whole family's day dream. But that, in the first
place, it would be harder than they would admit for them to have her go.
'If it were only this it would be hard,' she said, 'but we could bear
it; but--it isn't. What they couldn't bear would be to--to have me grow
away from them. I _couldn't_, truly; but--you know Elsa is at home now.
She talks of nothing but her college, her college friends, her high
marks at exams, her basketball team, and all that. She is always
complaining of her own people's plain ways. Connie, I can see so plainly
that when she has finished the education which her parents are pinching
themselves to give her she will use it to establish herself as far as
possible from them.'

"'Oh, Elsa?' I sniffed. 'I can believe anything of Elsa. _You_ couldn't
be so horrid and snobbish!'

"'She doesn't mean to be horrid, or know she is; she speaks of her
mother with tears in her eyes. It is only that she has gone into another
world from them, and wants to stay there. I don't want to go into any
other world than my father's and the others'. I don't want any better
taste than they have! I want better taste and I want them to have it,
but I want us all to get it together. Whatever I get I want to share
with them. I couldn't if I went away. I used to think I c