Part 3 (2/2)
”She could afford to have more variety,” said Miss Rebecca. ”The Lanes are mean enough about some things, but I know they'd like to have her dress better. She'll never get married in the world.”
”I don't know why not. She's only twenty-five--and good-looking.”
”Good-looking! That's not everything. Plenty of girls marry that are not good-looking--and plenty of good-looking girls stay single.”
”Plenty of homely ones, too. Rebecca,” said Miss Josie, with meaning.
Miss Rebecca certainly was not handsome. ”Going to the library, of course!” she pursued presently. ”That girl reads all the time.”
”So does her grandmother. I see her going and coming from that library every day almost.”
”Oh, well--she reads stories and things like that. Sallie goes pretty often and she notices. We use that library enough, goodness knows, but they are there every day. Vivian Lane reads the queerest things--doctor's books and works on pedagoggy.”
”G.o.dgy,” said Miss Rebecca, ”not goggy.” And as her sister ignored this correction, she continued: ”They might as well have let her go to college when she was so set on it.”
”College! I don't believe she'd have learned as much in any college, from what I hear of 'em, as she has in all this time at home.” The Foote girls had never entertained a high opinion of extensive culture.
”I don't see any use in a girl's studying so much,” said Miss Rebecca with decision.
”Nor I,” agreed Miss Josie. ”Men don't like learned women.”
”They don't seem to always like those that aren't learned, either,”
remarked Miss Rebecca with a pleasant sense of retribution for that remark about ”homely ones.”
The tall girl in brown had seen the two faces at the windows opposite, and had held her shoulders a little straighter as she turned the corner.
”Nine years this Summer since Morton Elder went West,” murmured Miss Josie, reminiscently. ”I shouldn't wonder if Vivian had stayed single on his account.”
”Nonsense!” her sister answered sharply. ”She's not that kind. She's not popular with men, that's all. She's too intellectual.”
”She ought to be in the library instead of Sue Elder,” Miss Rebecca suggested. ”She's far more competent. Sue's a feather-headed little thing.”
”She seems to give satisfaction so far. If the trustees are pleased with her, there's no reason for you to complain that I see,” said Miss Rebecca with decision.
Vivian Lane waited at the library desk with an armful of books to take home. She had her card, her mother's and her father's--all utilized.
Her grandmother kept her own card--and her own counsel.
The pretty a.s.sistant librarian, withdrawing herself with some emphasis from the unnecessary questions of a too gallant old gentleman, came to attend her.
”You _have_ got a load,” she said, scribbling complex figures with one end of her hammer-headed pencil, and stamping violet dates with the other. She whisked out the pale blue slips from the lid pockets, dropped them into their proper openings in the desk and inserted the cards in their stead with delicate precision.
”Can't you wait a bit and go home with me?” she asked. ”I'll help you carry them.”
”No, thanks. I'm not going right home.”
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