Darling Auntie! Selina threw grateful, passionate arms around her and kissed her. One could see Madame de Vaux and her babies in the cottage near the market-house through a glamour, but one hated Mr. Aristides Welkin in his calling. Why? Selina couldn't have said. Then in a rush of self-reproach, she swept about and kissed Mamma.
"It's a quarter past eight and I said I'd be there at nine. I'll have to hurry."
She walked the ten blocks out to the opener neighborhood of the Williams'. The early morning of the Indian summer day was tinged with blue mistiness and underfoot was the pleasant rustle and crackle of leaves along the pavement. On the way she stopped in a drugstore that dealt in school supplies. She had told Mrs. Williams to have a primer and first reader for William and she must have one of each herself. As the man brought them she recognized them as the same she had used in _her_ day, the primer with a salmon-pink cover in paper, the first reader in a blue cover in pasteboards.
She took them in their package and left. In her day? That meant at the little private school where she went at first and where she learned to read. What did happen in her day at that school? She had to teach William, and it might help her to remember?
She had held to Auntie's hand who took her to school that first day, she remembered that, and cried bitterly because she was frightened. And then? What had happened then?
Why Amanthus had happened then, the most lovely little girl Selina seemed ever to have seen, with bronze shoes on with tassels. And because of Amanthus and the shoes, and more particularly perhaps, the tassels, she had let go of Auntie's hand and consented to stay.
And then Maudie had happened, a taller little girl with plaits that were almost red. And after her a little, little girl with black curls in tiers, whose name turned out to be Juliette, and next a little girl with straight hair and big eyes named Adele. And following these, some little boys occurred named Bliss and Brent and Sam and Tommy.
And on this first day did lessons begin? Just as lessons were to begin this morning with William? If only she could recall!
Miss Dellie Black taught that school, and as Mamma intimated about the stiff collar and the cuffs, her alpaca apron and the gloves upon her hands with their fingers neatly cut off across the knuckles, seemed to be in keeping with her calling. She had a ruler and rapped with it, and a pointer with which she pointed to a primer chart and a blackboard.