Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/39

Rh always there in the pew beside her, with the Morgan keep-off, don't-speak-to-me air imprinted unmistakably on tightly-shut lips and primly folded hands.

Boarding-school had gone the same way as public-school and the Christian Endeavor Society. It was when Reba was first beginning to despair of ever meeting any young people that she heard that the Methodist minister's daughter was going away for a year to a girls' boarding-school. She brought the news home one afternoon, and in a voice that trembled with entreaty, wondered if she, too, might not go away for a year to a girls' boarding-school. She had learned by now that her father could really afford anything. She wanted to go so, she said,—they couldn't know how much she wanted to go! She had never been anywhere alone away from home. "But what's the use," Aunt Augusta had argued, "in exposing Reba at her impressionable age to the foolish notions of fifty-odd girls, brought up every which way, whose folks we've never seen nor heard of. No, sir! I prefer to keep my eye on Reba, till she's settled down to what she's going to be. Best let a custard set before disturbing it. That's my rule. We're fortunate in Miss Billings. Miss Billings can take her through Latin as well as any boarding-school, I guess. I don't intend to let any public, money-making institution go and spoil Reba for us now. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll have her father buy her a grand-piano and she can take music-lessons instead."

A piano instead of fifty shining opportunities of a girl-friend all her own! Piano-lessons instead of some one to share confidences with! Oh, the pity of it! Reba glanced down now at the bracelet on her wrist, and