In some cases the dilemma was real and the excuse good. In others it was born simply of fear. Oh, yes, they knew that Miss Benedict was a brilliant player, there was not her equal in the city; and as for her voice, it was simply superb; but then it did not follow that a fine musician was a fine teacher. She had not been educated for a teacher; that had been the farthest removed from her intention until necessity forced it upon her. It stood to reason that a girl who had been brought up in luxury, and had cultivated her musical talent as a passion, merely for her own pleasure, should know nothing about the principles of teaching, and have little patience with the drudgery of it. They had always been warned against broken-down ladies as teachers of anything.

There was a great deal of this feeling; and Claire, as she began to realize it more, was kept from bitterness because of the honesty of her nature. She could see that there was truth in these conclusions; and while she knew that she could give their children such teaching as the parents might have been glad to get, at any price, she admitted that they could not know this as she did, and were not to blame for caution.

She was kept from bitterness by one other experience.

There came to see her one evening, a woman who had done plain sewing for her in the days gone by; whom she had paid liberally and for whom she had interested herself to secure better paid labor than she had found her doing. This woman, with a certain confused air, as of one asking a favor, had come to say that she would take it as a great thing, if her Fanny could get into Miss Benedict's music class.

Miss Benedict explained kindly that she had no music class, but if she should form one in the city, it would give her pleasure to count Fanny as one of her pupils, and the mother could pay for it, if she wished, in doing a little sewing for them some time, when they should have sewing again to do. The sentence ended with a sigh. But the caller's embarrassment increased. She even forgot to thank the lady for her gracious intention, and looked down at her somewhat faded shawl, and twisted the fringe of it, and blushed, and tried to stammer out something. Claire began to suspect that this was but a small part of her errand, and to be roused to sympathy. Was there anything else she could do for her in any way, she questioned.

No! oh, no! there was nothing, only would she—would it not be possible to start a class with her Fanny, and let her pay, not in sewing, but in money, and the full value of the lessons, too; and here the woman stopped twisting the fringe of her shawl, and looked up with womanly dignity. She was doing better, she said; a great deal better than when Miss Benedict first sought her out. Thanks to her, she had plenty of sewing, as much as she could do, and of a good, paying kind; and she had thought—and here the shawl fringe was twisted again—that is, she had supposed or imagined—well, the long and short of it was, sometimes all that things wanted was a beginning, and she thought maybe if Miss Benedict could be so kind as to begin with Fanny, others would come in, and a good class get started before she knew it.

There was a suspicious quiver of Claire's chin as she listened to this, but her voice was clear and very gentle as she spoke:

"Tell me frankly, Mrs. Jones, do you think Fanny has a decided talent for music, which ought to be cultivated? I don't know the child, I think. Is she a singer?"

Then Mrs. Jones, all unused to subterfuge, and at home in the realm of frankness, was betrayed at once into admitting that she had never thought of such a thing as Fanny taking music lessons. No, she didn't sing: at least, not but very little, and she never said much about music; what she wanted was to learn to draw, but she, Mrs. Jones, had thought, as she said—and maybe it was presumption in her to think so—that what most things needed was to get started. No sooner did she get started in another kind of sewing, and among another kind of customers, than work poured in on her faster than she could do, and she thought Fanny would do maybe to start on. Long before the conclusion of this sentence the shawl fringe was suffering again.

Claire rose from her seat, and went over and stood before Mrs. Jones, her voice still clear and controlled:

"I thank you, Mrs. Jones, for your kind thought. So far from being presumptuous, it was worthy of your warm heart and unselfish nature. I shall not forget it, and it has done me good. But if I were you, I would not have Fanny take music lessons, and I would, if I could, give her drawing lessons. I remember, now, your telling me that she was always marking up her books with little bits of pictures. She probably has a good deal of talent in this direction, and not for music; I would cultivate her talents in the line in which they lie. Miss Parkhurst has a drawing-class just commencing. She is not very far from your corner, on Clark street. I hope Fanny can go to her, and if it would be any convenience to you to pay the bills in sewing, I am quite certain that Miss Parkhurst would be glad to do it. She was speaking about some work of the kind only yesterday, and I recommended you to her as one whom she could trust."

So they dropped once more into their natural characters, Claire the suggester and helper, and Mrs. Jones the grateful recipient. She went away thanked and comforted, and convinced that Fanny ought to have a chance at drawing, since Miss Benedict thought she had a talent.

As for Claire, she went back to her mother with two bright spots glowing on her cheeks, and knelt down beside her chair, and said:

"Mamma, I have just had the most delicate little bit of thoughtfulness shown me that I ever received from the world outside, and I'll tell you one thing it has settled; I mean to accept the first opening, from whatever source, that will take me away from the city. I am almost sure there is no work for me in this city."

Yet you are not to suppose that the great world of friends who had been glad of their recognition forgot them or ignored them. Much less are you to suppose that the great church—of which Mr. Benedict was such a prominent part that the projected entertainment for which the young people had been so nearly ready, missionary though it was, was indefinitely postponed when he died—forgot them or grew cold. Whatever the world may do, or whatever solitary individuals in the church may do under financial ruins, the great heart of the true church beats away for its own. And bravely they rallied around the widow, and heartily they tried to be helpful, and were helpful, indeed, so far as warm words and earnest efforts were concerned.

But they could not make vacancies for Claire in the line in which her talents fitted her to work. They could not make a strong woman of the mother, able to shoulder burdens such as are always waiting for strong shoulders. They could and would have supported them. For a time, at least, this would have been done joyfully; they longed to do it. They offered help in all possible delicate ways. The trouble was, this family would have none of it. Grateful?—oh, yes, but persistent in gently declining that which was not an absolute necessity.

In the very nature of things, as the days passed, they would be in a sense forgotten. Claire saw this, and the mother saw it. The rooms they had taken were very far removed from the old church and the old home and the old circle of friends. It consumed hours of the day to make the journey back and forth. Of course, it could not be made often, nor by many. Of course, the gaps which their changes had made would be filled in time; it was not reasonable to expect otherwise. Nobody expected it, but it was very bitter.

And the very first open door that Claire saw was an opportunity to teach music in a little unpretentious academy, in a little unpretentious town, away back among the hills, two hundred miles from the city that had always been her home.

It took talking—much of it—to reconcile the mother and sister to the thought of a separation. Through all their changes this one had not been suggested to their minds. They had expected, as a matter of course, to keep together. But necessity is a wonderful logician. The bank account was alarmingly small, and growing daily smaller. Even the unpractical mother and sister could see this. Something must be done, and here was the open door. Why not enter it at once, instead of waiting in idleness and suspense through the winter for something better? Thus argued Claire: "It will not be very easy to leave you, mamma, as you may well imagine," and here the sensitive chin would quiver, "but I should feel safe in doing so, for these ugly rooms are really very conveniently arranged, and Dora would learn to look after everything that Molly could not do by giving two days of work in a week. I have made positive arrangements with her for two days, and she depends upon it; you must not disappoint her. And, mamma, I have thought of what papa said about us," here the low voice took on a tone of peculiar tenderness, "perhaps Dora will learn self-reliance if she is left to shield and care for you; it will be a powerful motive. You know she leans on me now, naturally."

This was Claire's strongest argument, and, together with the argument of necessity, prevailed.

Barely four weeks from the "to-morrow" which had contained her last bright plans, she was installed as music teacher in the plain little academy building situated in South Plains.

And now I know that I need not even attempt to describe the sinking of heart with which she moved down the shabby narrow aisle, and seated herself in the uncushioned pew of the shabby little church on that first Sabbath morning.

Uncushioned! that was by no means the worst of the pew's failings. The back was at least four inches lower than it ought to have been, even for so slight a form as Claire's, and was finished with a moulding that projected enough to form a decided ridge. Of course, for purpose of support, the thing was a failure, and, as to appearance, nothing more awkward in the line of sittings could be imagined.

Fairly seated in this comfortless spot, the homesick girl looked about her to take in her dreary surroundings. Bare floors, not over clean, the most offensive looking faded red curtains flapping disconsolately against the old-fashioned, small-paned soiled windows; a platform, whose attempts at carpeting represented a large-patterned, soiled ingrain rag, whose colors, once much too bright for the place, had faded into disreputable ghosts of their former selves. The whole effect seemed to Claire by far more dreary than the bare floor of the aisles. A plain, square, four-legged table, that had not even been dusted lately, did duty as a pulpit desk, and a plain, wooden-backed, wooden-seated chair stood behind it. These were the sole attempts at furnishing. The walls of this desolate sanctuary seemed begrimed with the smoke of ages; they were festooned with cobwebs, these furnishing the only attempts at hiding the unsightly cracks. The few dreary-looking kerosene lamps disposed about the room gave the same evidence of neglect in their sadly smoked chimneys and general air of discouragement. However, had Claire but known it, she had cause for gratitude over the fact that they were not lighted, for they could prove their unfitness for the place they occupied in a much more offensive way.

Such, then, in brief, was the scene that greeted her sad eyes that morning. How utterly homesick and disheartened she was! It was all so different from the surroundings to which she had all her life been accustomed! She closed her eyes to hide the rush of tears, and to think, foolish girl that she was, of that other church miles and miles away. She could seem to see familiar forms gliding at this moment down the aisles, whose rich carpets gave back no sound of footfall. How soft and clear the colors of that carpet were! A suggestion of the delicately carpeted woods, and the shimmer of sunlight on a summer day toward the sun setting. She had helped to select that carpet herself, and she knew that she had an artist's eye for colors and for harmony. It was not an extravagantly elegant church—as city churches rank—that one to which her heart went back, but just one of those exquisitely finished buildings where every bit of color and carving and design which meet the cultured eye, rests and satisfies. Where the law of harmony touches the delicately frescoed ceiling, reaches down to the luxuriously upholstered pews, finds its home in the trailing vines of the carpet, and breathes out in the roll of the deep-toned organ.

It was in such a church, down such a broad and friendly aisle, that Claire Benedict had been wont to follow her father and mother on Sabbath mornings, keeping step to the melody which seemed to steal of itself from the organ, and fill the lofty room. Can you imagine something of the contrast?