"Instead of keeping the sixteen dollars for your carfare and incidentals and such?" smiled Papa, perhaps a little embarrassed, too, at the trend of the conversation. "Won't you sit down, Selina?"
"But it seems so much more to Mamma and Auntie to have it come from me this way."
"I bow to the processes in feminine logic more intricate than I can follow," agreed Papa. "And what then, Selina?"
For a moment she almost abandoned the affair, then rallied: "Would you be willing to advance more, Oh, a great deal more, all of--" Selina nerved herself desperately, cold to her pretty finger-tips with the effort of it, "--yes, a hundred dollars, if you thought good could come to me of it?"
"Willing always, Selina; able is another thing. It is not easy for a father to confess to his daughter that as a business proposition he is a failure."
The very necessity to get away from the horribly painful embarrassment of this drove her on. "I have a chance to go away and teach, I can be a help then by earning something worth while. Marcus thinks it wise, Marcus says I ought to go, that I need to develop in self-reliance and----"
The story came forth at this with a rush of detail. "And, Papa, to be a whole, whole winter with Miss 'Hontas, under the same roof, doing the same things! I love her so, Papa, I love her!"
There were further questionings from him and answers from Selina and something in his sensitive face as he watched her while she talked, drove her to seek justification.
"There is so much in the world, isn't there, Papa? And I haven't seen anything of it yet? Not anything!"
By the time that Miss Diana Talbot was ready to return home several days later, it was settled that Selina should go South in October and teach for the winter in her school.
Mamma cried right along through the summer about it, and as the time began to approach, Auntie stopped eating and grew pale. Culpepper had gone home in June without knowing anything about the plan just then afoot, and here at this point, late in August, an invitation came down from Cousin Maria Buxton for Auntie and Selina to visit her.
"There's too much to do and to plan getting Selina ready," decided Mamma, "and there'd be the extra expense of it to consider. I don't see how it can be arranged, do you, Ann Eliza?"