If Mrs. Scott had suspected the ambitions which filled the mind of pretty Eleanor, she would have run after Mrs. Bent. Eleanor had become inspired with a desire to write, an ambition put into her head by Dr. Green, and zealously cultivated by him, and she had got into shape, without telling any one but her mother, several stories which were not without merit. One she had ventured to send away and to-day the excitement of graduation was dulled by the approach of a more important event. The editor of "Willard's Magazine" to which she had sent "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" had written to say that a representative of that magazine would call upon her in the course of the week. It was improbable that they would send a messenger from New York to distant and inaccessible Waltonville unless her story was really to be accepted! Yet acceptance was outside the bounds of possibility.
"I shouldn't eat or sleep for a week," she declared as the embroidered Commencement dress went over her head and her white shoulders.
Mrs. Bent looked up at her with her most frightened expression. Her duckling had proved to be a swan--there was no doubt of that.
"Don't set yourself on it," she said, remembering sundry very different disappointments of her own. "Things often don't turn out like we want they should."
Mrs. Bent's hands trembled; she would have given her life to have things turn out the way Eleanor wanted they should. Even now there was another happiness approaching, of which Eleanor knew nothing. Going one day to Thomasina's house, Mrs. Bent had asked Thomasina to do a service for her and Eleanor.
"I don't like to put you to trouble," she explained nervously. "I want to sell my piano."
"Yes?" said Thomasina. Was poor little Mrs. Bent in financial difficulties? It would be a great pity if Eleanor had to discontinue her lessons. "That is, not exactly to sell it, but to change it."
"Yes," said Thomasina, who never interrupted or tried to complete the sentences of other persons.
"Yes." Thomasina saw that her guess was wrong.
"But I don't know much about--about such things." Mrs. Bent had meant to say about pianos, but she suddenly could not remember whether the i was long or short. She knew that one or the other was very wrong, but she could not remember which she had used a moment ago.