25 Adolescent conditioning

This put an end to our pretensions towards charitable grief. I think we all fell in love—and not only our threesome, but every other girl in the class. The object of our passion was a new student who, in addition to having a fascinating profile, played the piano with dash and tremendously impressive gestures. His name was Simon, and all I now remember of him with tenderness is, that on Valentine’s day I was the happy recipient of a pinkish card that bore flattering erasures testifying to our hero’s romantic struggles. Patently, it had first been intended for Laura J., but wound up with my initials instead. I am glad to say that I had the fortitude to refrain from drawing attention to this amazing fact, although, quite naturally, I slept with the precious missive under my pillow for at least a week. After which, I am sorry to confess, we had an unholy scrap about Swedes and Norwegians, which ended all heart throbs. Simon was a Swede, and not unnaturally, took it amiss when I quoted Olaf Trygvasson’s opinion of his Swedish enemies: Swedes, said the great king, were not to be trusted, for in guile they were almost the equal of Danes!

Well, poor Simon might have forgiven me even this if, to clinch my argument, I had not reminded him about the erasures on the Valentine. Even in love you could never tell which way a Swede would jump, said I, and flounced off, leaving Simon to the softer graces of Molly MacDonald.

What stings of conscience I may have had were soon forgotten. The complex business of growing up was too engrossing for any one twitter of emotion to hold the stage long. We three inseparables, Laura J., Tilly, and I, held many a counsel on the good old sun-baked rocks in our back-yard, tackling everything under the sun with sublime confidence in our ability to hit upon the right solution. Mostly, these orations had to do with the shining futures we meant to carve out for ourselves, and our individual reactions to what we mistook for a precocious grasp of life.

Foolish though we were, and buoyed up by all sorts of sentimental trash, we none the less understood quite thoroughly that none of us would have an easy time attaining our simplest ambitions. Laura wanted to go to a business college, but where on earth was the money to come from? In a household where there never were enough decent shoes to go round, and a joint of meat had to serve for six different stews, was it likely she’d get any help from that quarter? When she finished grammar school she meant to go to work. The match factory paid five dollars a week, and even after paying board she hoped to save towards her ambition. Tilly wanted to go to work too, but not to save money, but to spend it fixing up the house. To get a carpet, and curtains, and new chairs—and a girl had to have some nice corner to entertain her friends. Tilly’s idea of perpetual bliss was founded on the Dinsmore myth. Mine was the most fantastic dream of all.

I, if you please, wanted a college education. It would all be very simple. I had only to finish the ninth grade, take a year of Normal (possible then), and teach my way to glory and renown. It was a dream I kept bright, as I washed the kitchen floor of a Saturday, shined the lamp chimneys, and renewed the pink rags in the fat belly of the parlour lamp. Yet there were weak moments when I wondered if being a fairly good student were all it was cracked up to be.

Molly MacDonald was such a dud in class that she couldn’t conjugate a verb without choking on her teeth, but she was going to finishing school next winter to fit herself for the kind of profession Tilly coveted, and would never embrace. Not because Molly had a sweeter nature, or the maternal heart, but because Molly’s papa was now in politics, and, consequently, picked off the biggest civic contracts. I understood that clearly enough—as clearly as I understood how surely Mr. MacDonald attributed his successful chiselling to the grace of God.

It would seem that nature, by way of compensating for many deficiencies had generously sprinkled my natal dust with the wholesome salt of scepticism. Which might have served me well, had I not betrayed the gift and followed instead the foolish lure of impossible ideals. Even at this early stage I suspected the weakness of the pretty sentiments peddled out for our edification—be good, sweet maid; kind hearts are more than coronets; virtue is its own reward, etc., etc. Nevertheless, I wanted to believe in this nonsense, and tried, therefore, with amusing silliness, to emulate the Sacred Monkeys, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, speaking no evil.

Destiny and desire are not always compatible. The comfortable blinkers that most sweet souls wear throughout life, to the exclusion of distressing realities, were not to be my portion; nor yet the soothing cotton wool of indisputable conviction that shuts out all contrary thought. Whatever my predilection, I had to see and experience no end of things that the average individual knows only by hearsay, or not at all.

There came an unforgettable day that was to leave an indelible impression. Mamma, who had always great pleasure in sharing anything she had with others, sent me with a quart of Jersey cream to my aunt, who, by now, had transformed her house into a cottage hospital. She was getting on in years, and found it arduous to continue her rounds in every sort of weather. Gone, naturally, was the handsome minister, and gone, too, the former atmosphere of intimacy. The homeliest place was the kitchen, where a variety of housemaids presided, untroubled by snooping interference.

But, on this day, when I stepped into the cheery room out of a golden autumn sunshine, I was instantly oppressed by a feeling of freighted tension. The cook was nowhere about, nor were there, at the moment, any sounds of activity. Thinking the girl was busy upstairs, I put the cream in the pantry, and then, every nerve jittery, tiptoed through my aunt’s private quarters. I was just on the point of mounting the stairs when a sudden piercing shriek rooted me to the spot.

My impulse was to flee, but my feet refused to move. What followed was so hideous, I felt as though my own flesh were riddled and torn with a battery of javelins. The sudden assault upon the nerves was nothing compared with the subsequent shock of horror when the significance of these ghastly cries flashed upon me. Everything in me revolted, every quivering sense rebelling hotly against this obscene anguish at the roots of life. Yes, now I understood what was going on up there. What, my terrified mind told me, was going on and on and on all over the whole wide world. A shambles of suffering, senseless and cruel. And, I thought with fierce loathing, no life was worth such a trial of suffering.

I wanted to run, to hide for ever from such hideous reality. But to save my soul, I couldn’t stir. I sat there paralysed in shameful misery and vicarious pain. Oh, would it never end, never, never be over and done!

Why didn’t my aunt put a stop to those unspeakable wails! Oh, I was soon to learn how much more insufferable the sounds of spent and dying energy can be. The poor, tormented voice lost all its human quality, changed to hoarse, inarticulate, animal groanings, that made me long to howl in horrid sympathy. Then, in a wild burst of reviving consciousness, the hateful sounds shaped to piteous clarity:

‘Dear Jesus, save me! Save me! Jesus! Jesus—’

Almost simultaneously, the door opened, and, dreadful to behold, there stood my aunt, slumped against the edge of the door, broken, beaten, such a look on her face as I shall never forget.

O God, I thought, now all was lost! When that tower of human strength hung there, defeated, what hope remained for the pitiful sufferer. But Haldora Olson was not the kind of woman to support defeat. Only a moment or two, she steadied herself, breathing heavily, summoning all of her flagging forces with eyes shut, with lips a ridge of drawn purple in a strong, out-jutting chin. Then, with a quick lift of the shoulders, as though to unseat weariness and fear, back she marched to the grim battle.

I cannot say, for time had lost its meaning, how long thereafter it was that Berta, the cook, came streaking out of the room with a bundle in her arms, and the tears streaming down her face. I don’t suppose anything could have surprised her after such an experience. A fainting youngster cringing on the stairs occasioned no concern. Catching sight of me, she fairly yelled in triumph:

‘She pulled her through! She saved them both! Dear Lord, I never saw such a woman!’

Feeling very small and insignificant I crept out into the mellow twilight, but with a warmth of pride about the heart—a beat of stirring happiness in my frightened breast.

I had plumbed the ugliest fears in an overwhelming realization of menacing death. Those awful moments were often to infest my dreams, awake and asleep, but always the sturdy figure of my aunt came to the rescue. Life was full of terrors, that I perceived, but courage, plain human courage, was a force that worked miracles. And now, too, I could appreciate the answer my aunt once made to a pious dame who was taking her to task for laxity in church attendance.

Said the lady: ‘Surely you have some thought for the afterlife? Have you not considered that you must render an account at the judgement seat?’

‘Sure,’ said my aunt, with jovial patience. ‘If old Peter gets obstreperous at the Gate, I’ll wave my forceps under his nose. That, I think, will silence the old fellow!’

But to go on with my tale. That experience seemed to usher me into an entirely new world—a world I frantically sought to dodge by burying myself in books more deeply than ever. I found my escape in the nature poetry of Bryant, and used to go mooning about the hill-side, or sit for stolen hours in some cranny of rocks overhanging the brook, mumbling Thanatopsis, and The Ages, growing sweetly tearful over some noble savage in chains. Yet even this device could not for long stop or stem the natural curiosity that prodded and pricked my mind.

The rhythm of verse was an enchantment less fascinating than the mystery of life. I began to see human beings in a different light; for the first time I was conscious that the really interesting thing about any one is not what he seems at any given moment, but what he represents in the sum-total of his experience. I was still very much of a child, and thoroughly enjoyed the surprise parties that were the order of the day, but, in the midst of such a lark, I would suddenly find myself worrying about Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. Berg, and even Simon’s antics at the piano would lose significance. And again fate conspired to feed my curiosity. In quick succession a number of events befell, each one contributing its lasting impression.

To begin with, that case at the hospital became a sort of village wonder, discussed everywhere with varying emphasis. It was commonly agreed that my aunt had performed a miracle, but that it was rather a pity the effort had not been expended in a better cause. For Olga was an unmarried mother, you see, and, as a woman of thirty-eight, should have known better.

Which was doubtless true, yet neither the sinner nor my aunt seemed to think the situation called for sackcloth and ashes, although Olga had not a cent to pay for her care.

‘Oh, I expected that,’ said my aunt. ‘Look here, my girl, can you cook a decent meal?’

‘God love you, how do you suppose I got myself into this mess!’ exclaimed the beaming miscreant. ‘Sure, it’s the black truth, you can cook yourself to what a man calls his heart. If it’s a cook you want, Mrs. Olson, I can pay off a dozen babies in no time at all.’

So Olga remained, not only a month or two, as so many others were to do, but for three years, presiding with energy and dispatch over the big kitchen—cheered to the marrow, as she used to say, by the sight of her little Stanley tumbling about the floor. A more amiable creature never fell from grace. In the end, aunt got so fond of her that she gave way to occasional grim forebodings.

‘I can’t think why the Lord made a woman like that!’ she’d say angrily. ‘No hips at all! I hope the creature has sense enough not to marry.’

Which was asking too much of an optimist like Olga. One day she met a farmer from northern Wisconsin, a very decent man, who accepted little Stanley without comment, and Olga thought herself the luckiest of women to have found a kind father for her nameless son. Two years later she died in childbed.

But that is stealing from the future. At the time of which I write, Olga was just entering upon her long service, and I had yet to learn, by contrasting her kindly behaviour with that of many another self-righteous mortal, that so-called sins of the flesh are perhaps the least of evils. I, naturally, was not much of a character analyst, but neither was I so stupid as not to perceive that Laura’s mother, for example, managed to make herself and her daughter thoroughly miserable, and her whole house a forbidding place to enter, although she was doubtless free of the cardinal sins. Yes, and despite the fact that she meant well, and really thought she was spending herself for the good of her children. This thought, no less than the more arresting events I have been leading up to, gave me many a fretful hour. For I had the tidy sort of old-maid mind that wanted everything fitted into neat little pigeon-holes.

The two happenings which now transpired in quick succession, to give me still another slant on the peculiar workings of the human mind, have to do with Stina, our dear old gossip. She and her Sam had a tiny cottage on the brow of the hill, above our house, and, though the place was small, she had made room for Big Tom. What is more, she surprised every one by having another baby. A little girl, now nearly two years old, of whom she was immensely proud.

Milde was a sweet little creature, with wide blue eyes, and the kind of sunny hair that looks like wisps of summer cloud. It was more than touching to see how tenderly the plain, hard-working mother waited upon this tiny human being—the little flower of her old age, as she used to say. Marvellous were the ambitions Stina had for the pretty child, and, of course, poor old Sam prized her even above his sacred unions.

Then, one Saturday morning, just as we were sipping the ten o’clock coffee, in burst our neighbour, wild-eyed and distraught. Milde had taken sick! But the sickness wasn’t natural, said Stina, sinking into a chair and staring at mamma helplessly. She was sleeping now, the wee angel. But all night she had tossed and cried out—sometimes gasping as though ghostly hands were tormenting her, choking the breath out of her little body.

‘My dear Stina! It may be a touch of the croup. Children are subject to such things,’ mamma calmed her. ‘I’ll come at once, if you like, and perhaps we should send for the doctor.’

Stina started to cry. No, Milde was quite all right now. She breathed easily, and had no fever, but, the fact remained, something evil hovered over her. That Thing in the Night was a Visitation!

‘Now, Stina, be sensible. Drink a bit of coffee and put such notions out of your head. Very likely the child ate something that disagreed with her.’

Stina obediently drank her coffee, bolting it down like a bitter medicine. Then she said: ‘It’s no use denying these things, Ingiborg. Isafell’s Mori’ (Ghost of the Mountain) ‘is after my child!’

So there it was. Sam, it seems, was a member of a family afflicted with a ghostly follower, a malignant creature who, in each generation, took vengeance for an ancient wrong done him by a cruel employer. Nothing that mamma found to say could in the least comfort Stina. She knew in her heart of hearts that Milde was the chosen victim.

To satisfy herself that the child was not seriously ill mamma immediately set off for Stina’s house, and, so far as she could judge, the little girl appeared quite normal. In the afternoon she was playing about as usual, and so we thought no more about it. In fact, Stina and her ghost were the subjects of affectionate derision that night at supper. It was all nonsense, said papa, but added: nevertheless a lot of intelligent old-timers firmly believed in Isafell’s Mori.

Whatever it was, we were sufficiently shocked next morning when Sam, almost beside himself, tore into the house to tell us that little Milde was dead. She had died at dawn, in the throes of some sort of violent convulsion, with no other signs of sickness, and no warning of the attack.

Poor Stina! There was little enough we could do for her, except to share, with all our hearts, in her bitter grief. To listen, days on end, to the pitiful tale, not even daring to dispute the justice of the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children. But at last Stina comforted herself with the thought that little Milde was safe in the heavenly country.

‘Ja, maybe it’s best,’ she sighed. ‘My little love won’t break her heart as women do in this world.’ After all, she herself was lucky to have Valdi, who was such a good boy. Smart in school, and always so cheerful about delivering the washing she did for the ladies in those fine city houses. A handsome boy, Valdi, and never a nasty word out of him, thank God.

There was another shock in store for our good neighbour. One day Big Tom came home from work, and, for once he had something to say.

‘It’s early, I know, Missus,’ said he, apologetically. ‘I ain’t feeling so good—in here.’ And-he tapped his broad chest.

Stina left the wash-tub, and flew for the coffee-pot. ‘Man, dear, you’re green about the gills! Now, Tom, don’t perch on that hard chair. Take the rocker by the window. You’ll soon perk up with a nice hot drop. You hadn’t ought to work so hard at your age.’

Tom accepted the chair in silence, but when Stina brought the cup, he made the first speech of his life:

‘You’re a good woman—I—I—well, good!’

Telling us this afterwards, Stina covered her face and wept. ‘Such a look in his eyes, poor man. It made me ashamed, Mrs. Goodman—me, that was so often so short, what with my sore feet and all.’

His speech made, Tom had drunk his coffee, and, a little later, went out in his silent, shadow way. Stina finished her washing, and began to make supper, before she realized that her boarder had not come in again. He was not on the porch, nor in the yard, where he sometimes did a bit of weeding. Then, suddenly, she knew, and came rushing for papa.

Big Tom, always the butt of malicious fate, had died in the outhouse. To Stina, this was an almost insupportable misery. Ja, it taxed her faith in Almighty God! It was so unseemly for a decent man to die in such a place—as though it were meant as a final insult.

Kind soul, she did her best to make amends, and nothing would do but that her few acquaintances should honour the dead man by gathering round his coffin in her small front room, before he was taken away. As might be expected, these friends were humble women, none of whom could speak English very well. They came in their Sunday best, their plain scrubbed faces eloquent of honest sympathy. They had not known Big Tom, except as a plodding, inoffensive toiler, coming and going upon his dull rounds. But they knew death, as all the poor know death. Their solemnity was sincere, and their faith earnest.

When they had sat in respectful silence for a woeful interlude, and then suddenly realized that no pastor was present, that, in fact, no other rites were to be held for Big Tom, one good old soul rose to the rescue. Tears streaming from her faded eyes and her hands weaving nervously, she addressed the solemn company.

‘It’s not fitting to say nothing. What’s in the heart should come out. Big Tom, now—God knows, we are sorry—Big Tom—ja, poor man—p—poor man—’ tears choked her, and, with a heroic rush, she concluded: ‘He lived like a dog—and he died like a dog. Lord Jesus receive him. Amen.’

Thus, luckless to the last, Big Tom departed our ken.

This same year mamma began to worry about my Christian education. I use the term advisedly—my possible ignorance of the Scriptures, not any fear of moral obliquity, troubled her. Mamma was a firm believer that decency was inbred, not imbued. But she held firmly to the notion that respectable people should pass their religious examinations like any other. That I knew the contents of the New Testament almost by heart she was well aware. Papa had given me an English Testament, which I still treasure, and which is marked from cover to cover. I was to learn English by reading it, and read it I did, every night for many years. Now, however, mamma wanted this reading to bear some tangible result. I must be confirmed like every other child of decent, Episcopal Lutheran faith.

But how to do it was a problem. There was no Icelandic church in Duluth. The only solution was to attach myself to the Norwegian church which Tilly attended.

It seemed a timely thought. The church in question had called a new minister, a young man full of zeal and fervent ambitions. The old church was to be completely renovated, the basement enlarged, new pews installed, and a pipe organ was to replace the rheumy instrument which in former days defeated every musical effort. And to start the thing off right, the official opening of the reborn church was to centre around the pastor’s first confirmation class. Well, you could hardly ask for a more auspicious entrance into respectability. Still, if I were to be thus favoured, I decided that Laura J. must share the good fortune. Laura’s mamma naturally objected.

Crazi ungi, how did she think Papa J. could find a confirmation dress, and goodness knows what other nonsense? Crazi ungi raised her voice for righteousness and rectitude, and won, with breath to spare. So Laura, who understood as little of Norwegian as I, read the English Catechism with me.

The class was large, and we two were forced to sit through all the tedious examinations of the others before our answers were required. The Reverend Bjerke was a serious young man, determined that none of his sheep should go amiss. In addition to the Catechism, the wider sanctities were impressed on us. The Virtuous Life eschewed all frivolity, such as card-playing, drinking, dancing, skating to music (for some reason incomprehensible to me, it was commendable in the open, but not under a roof, where you were comfortable), the theatre, wordly books, unseemly companions, immodest language, foolish mirth, and, above all, the dangerous pitfalls of spurious religions.

For the first time in my life I became intimately acquainted with Satan, and all his works, and the sulphuric terrors of the yawning pit. It all had a dreadful sound on the Pastor’s grim lips, and yet, to tell the truth none of us lost an ounce of weight. As a matter of fact, we were all very fond of Pastor Bjerke, for, despite his fierce recitals, he meant to be kind, and certainly his earnestness was above question.

He had married just before taking the charge, and as soon as his wife was established in the modest manse, he celebrated by giving us a party. Dear me, what a serious business it was! How impeccably modest and self-effacing was the lady of his heart. Except to shake us by the hand and play the organ for a brace of hymns, and to pour coffee in smiling shyness from a high silver pot, Mrs. Bjerke discreetly kept the peace.

This humility made me thoroughly uncomfortable, for the women of my family were by no stretch of imagination gentle doves. They did not look to their husbands for approval before they cracked a smile at the mildest joke, nor defer the faintest opinion to their lordly sanction. Which was, I soon discovered, the appointed ritual for young Mrs. Bjerke.

No doubt this was good and beautiful, but, somehow it left me as unconvinced as the precious prattle of Elsie Dinsmore. So too, much of Reverend Bjerke’s lusty thunder passed over me with small effect. His vitriolic blasts against other forms of faith, for instance, only served to sharpen my critical senses. I had spent three years in the Baptist Church, and, so far as I could see, there was little difference between that hapless congregation and this little flock. And if there were a difference it favoured the Baptists, whose hymns, at least, were cheerful, and their minister a joy to the eye. Also, for a brief while, I had attended Sunday school in the Presbyterian Church, of which my aunt was a member, but fled in consternation when a lady tapped me on the shoulder, and, in dripping piety, inquired if I were saved.

I had been led to believe in the mercy of God, but not in the practice of boasting of grace. Moreover, I knew quite well that mamma would have been amused at the notion that an infant of thirteen had as yet anything to be saved from, anything at all to brag about. However, these ventures furnished me with courage to contend that other denominations were as concerned for the souls of men as Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church. For the most part, Bjerke confined his barbs to the Catholic heresy—for the Scarlet Woman who had set up her Abomination of Abominations in the Holy of Holies. Idolators! Deluded mortals, steeped in superstitions. A betrayed people, who fixed their faith in signs and symbols: for example, the sign of the cross.

Well, at that, I pricked up my ears. Believe it or not, I still crossed myself when I said my prayers, nor could I see why the moral effect of such a practice was any more superstitious than setting up the cross on the altar of the church itself. Moreover, when Bjerke waxed oratorical, painting the glories of the church as the Bride of Christ, I was tempted to ask if he had not stolen a leaf from the pages of Catholicism. To be truthful, I not infrequently plagued the good man with outrageous contention, all of which he bore with patience although he seldom permitted the little Norwegians to say a word.

If any had wanted to say a word! Perhaps the novelty of my impertinence amused him. Or mayhap he may have realized that honesty, and no desire to be smart, was my defence. Or perhaps it was simply that, as yet, he had not hardened into the unyielding jelly of infallible bigotries.

Be that as it may. Whatever good I derived from this experience, it had nothing to do with Bjerke’s instructions. In all those months nothing except questions of doctrine, and various chosen passages from the Scriptures, was discussed. All of which stressed the moral of implicit obedience to a God who thereupon smote your enemies, and made a jolly bonfire of the miserable upstarts who questioned the rules of the game.

This Germanic ideology might have appealed to me—it is so tremendously flattering to imagine one’s self the chosen elect of an all-powerful dictator—if I had not read the New Testament in the same spirit applied to any other book. If I had not formed a picture of Jesus of Nazareth as a man above all bigotry and hatred, a man clothed in the righteousness of a tolerant mind, sensitive to beauty, compassionate of weakness; who loved the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field; who spoke in parables, which is the language of poetic hearts; and said of the Sinner: ‘Neither do I condemn thee.’ There it was, simple and direct, a sword of truth, against which all this sectarian thunder must surely die.

For the moment, however, I was bound over to the dusty rituals, and must acquit myself creditably in the pastor’s eyes. I must stand forth fully equipped on confirmation day. And let no one imagine I had not my own earnest desire to make something of this experience—a confession, not of religion, but of an honest desire to respect the precepts of decency and justice.

Pastor Bjerke did not spare us, bless his heart. With the conscientious patience of an inquisitor, he plied his questions, gravely heard the answers, and ponderously elaborated upon the meanings therein, and the seriousness of the step we were taking. And there we stood, in our new-found finery, solemn little owls, growing hungrier by the hour, and foolish with fatigue.

My good aunt had come out for the occasion, dressed in her Sunday satin, but, when, almost two hours had dragged by with no signs of weakening on the pastor’s part, she picked up her reticule, and, indignation in every rustle, stalked away, nothing caring how many saints she shocked.

Greeting me later over the celebration dinner mamma had prepared, she said: ‘My dear child, does the man go on like that all the time? Assaulting thought with Biblical brickbats? Heavens above! Well—well—did you like the muff I gave you?’

Certainly I liked the muff. Liked all the new regalia, which, I fondly hoped, gave me a very smart appearance. The cashmere dress, with its over lace yoke and shirring, was nothing to sneeze at, believe me. A competent dressmaker had made it, and proudly declared that the puffed sleeves were copied from the dress of a society queen. I had a new coat, too, of slate grey, form fitting, which added years to my innocence. Indeed, I could almost believe my hated plumpness was easing up a bit. My face would never launch a thousand ships, or even a single frigate, but the rest of me wasn’t so bad. An opinion which seems to have seized upon the fancy of a very nice young man in the congregation, for, a couple of Sundays later, he very properly saw me home.

Goodness me, that was a twittering occasion. Nor was he to be got rid of so easily as Simon. He was not argumentative, which was a terrible handicap, and he loved books, which made it impossible not to be interested in his conversation. Moreover, it was very flattering to be asked to the next basket social.

But the fly in the ointment was my passion for another fascinating creature, a beautiful thing called Manfred, whom I worshipped from afar, had never spoken to, and should very likely have died of ecstasy had he so much as glanced my way. And there was still another complication. Never mean with my affection, I had a really soft spot in my heart for Arne, one of the boys in the confirmation class. All through that fall Arne had steered me safely past the terrors of the homeward path. It was difficult, to say the least. Tilly thought it very romantic, for Carl was quite the best catch in the church. She said she and no end of girls were angling for him. Even Mrs. Bjerke’s niece had her eyes on him. If I had any sense, I’d nab the poor dear before he changed his mind.

This excellent advice had a startling inference. ‘But, Tilly,’ I yelped, ‘I don’t want to nab him. I don’t want to nab anybody. I’m going to school for years and years and years.’

‘Just the same, I’d hang on to him,’ she retorted, with admirable logic. ‘To make safe. You’ll never find any one nicer.’

We had reached that certain age, it seemed. A delightfully silly age, where, for a brief interval, we played with emotion, walking in rosy light, and forgot reality. It was all very harmless and innocent—a statement which will be suspected in this day of Freudian preoccupation—nevertheless, true. I shall come to more serious attachments, but, at this time, our romantic attachments never exceeded the charming business of holding hands at a sleigh ride, or on the doorstep under the stars, and, strange though it may seem, it was very, very thrilling.

To be sure, I had enough to keep me occupied in school and at home. I was still subject to bouts of bronchitis and everlasting migraine headaches. There was scarcely a week when the latter did not steal a day or two from my classes, and I had therefore to work the harder when my senses cleared. Then, too I read an unconscionable lot, made all my own clothes, helped with the children’s clothes, did the marketing, and not infrequently the Sunday baking. Carl, and the odd social, were the least of my concerns.

What did intrigue me, far above any flutter of romance, were the pathetic cases that drifted to my aunt’s hospital. From all over the State, and sometimes from Ontario, these girls and women came to be eased of their unwelcome burden, and to hide from society. That so many strange human histories unfolded before me was not due to any persuasion on my part. I popped along to the hospital, and aunt, perhaps looking up from some bit of reading, would push up her spectacles, eye me soberly, and say:

‘So there you are! Well, run up to number eight. There’s a poor creature needs cheering. But, mind you, take no stock of what she says. They’re apt to lie, poor souls.’

Up I’d go to number eight, or ten, or two, or whatever it was. Not much wanting to be a perambulating confessional, but nobody, in his right senses, crossed my aunt lightly. At first I nearly perished of fright, as I entered these little cubicles, so overcast with tangled emotions. For always, the feel of a room communicates a great deal to me, and the vibrations of spiritual anguish are a terrible force. After a bit, however, my very shyness and stupidity inspired confidence—as though each of those unhappy Magdalenes said to herself: there’s no harm in telling my troubles to this idiot, no more harm than talking to the clothes-press.