The Sincere Spinster

: The Virginian

I do not know with which of the two estimates--Mr. Taylor's or the

Virginian's--you agreed. Did you think that Miss Mary Stark Wood of

Bennington, Vermont, was forty years of age? That would have been an

error. At the time she wrote the letter to Mrs. Balaam, of which

letter certain portions have been quoted in these pages, she was in

her twenty-first year; or, to be more precise, she had been twenty some

eight months
revious.



Now, it is not usual for young ladies of twenty to contemplate a journey

of nearly two thousand miles to a country where Indians and wild animals

live unchained, unless they are to make such journey in company with a

protector, or are going to a protector's arms at the other end. Nor is

school teaching on Bear Creek a usual ambition for such young ladies.



But Miss Mary Stark Wood was not a usual young lady for two reasons.



First, there was her descent. Had she so wished, she could have belonged

to any number of those patriotic societies of which our American ears

have grown accustomed to hear so much. She could have been enrolled in

the Boston Tea Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green Mountain

Daughters, the Saratoga Sacred Circle, and the Confederated Colonial

Chatelaines. She traced direct descent from the historic lady whose name

she bore, that Molly Stark who was not a widow after the battle where

her lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as to send his name

thrilling down through the blood of generations of schoolboys. This

ancestress was her chief claim to be a member of those shining societies

which I have enumerated. But she had been willing to join none of them,

although invitations to do so were by no means lacking. I cannot tell

you her reason. Still, I can tell you this. When these societies were

much spoken of in her presence, her very sprightly countenance became

more sprightly, and she added her words of praise or respect to the

general chorus. But when she received an invitation to join one of

these bodies, her countenance, as she read the missive, would assume an

expression which was known to her friends as "sticking her nose in the

air." I do not think that Molly's reason for refusing to join could have

been a truly good one. I should add that her most precious possession--a

treasure which accompanied her even if she went away for only one

night's absence--was an heirloom, a little miniature portrait of the old

Molly Stark, painted when that far-off dame must have been scarce more

than twenty. And when each summer the young Molly went to Dunbarton, New

Hampshire, to pay her established family visit to the last survivors of

her connection who bore the name of Stark, no word that she heard in the

Dunbarton houses pleased her so much as when a certain great-aunt would

take her by the hand, and, after looking with fond intentness at her,

pronounce: "My dear, you're getting more like the General's wife every

year you live."



"I suppose you mean my nose," Molly would then reply.



"Nonsense, child. You have the family length of nose, and I've never

heard that it has disgraced us."



"But I don't think I'm tall enough for it."



"There now, run to your room, and dress for tea. The Starks have always

been punctual."



And after this annual conversation, Molly would run to her room, and

there in its privacy, even at the risk of falling below the punctuality

of the Starks, she would consult two objects for quite a minute before

she began to dress. These objects, as you have already correctly

guessed, were the miniature of the General's wife and the looking glass.



So much for Miss Molly Stark Wood's descent.



The second reason why she was not a usual girl was her character. This

character was the result of pride and family pluck battling with family

hardship.



Just one year before she was to be presented to the world--not the great

metropolitan world, but a world that would have made her welcome and

done her homage at its little dances and little dinners in Troy and

Rutland and Burlington--fortune had turned her back upon the Woods.

Their possessions had never been great ones; but they had sufficed. From

generation to generation the family had gone to school like gentlefolk,

dressed like gentlefolk, used the speech and ways of gentlefolk, and as

gentlefolk lived and died. And now the mills failed.



Instead of thinking about her first evening dress, Molly found pupils

to whom she could give music lessons. She found handkerchiefs that she

could embroider with initials. And she found fruit that she could

make into preserves. That machine called the typewriter was then in

existence, but the day of women typewriters had as yet scarcely begun

to dawn, else I think Molly would have preferred this occupation to the

handkerchiefs and the preserves.





There were people in Bennington who "wondered how Miss Wood could go

about from house to house teaching the piano, and she a lady." There

always have been such people, I suppose, because the world must always

have a rubbish heap. But we need not dwell upon them further than to

mention one other remark of theirs regarding Molly. They all with one

voice declared that Sam Bannett was good enough for anybody who did

fancy embroidery at five cents a letter.



"I dare say he had a great-grandmother quite as good as hers," remarked

Mrs. Flynt, the wife of the Baptist minister.



"That's entirely possible," returned the Episcopal rector of Hoosic,

"only we don't happen to know who she was." The rector was a friend of

Molly's. After this little observation, Mrs. Flynt said no more, but

continued her purchases in the store where she and the rector had

happened to find themselves together. Later she stated to a friend that

she had always thought the Episcopal Church a snobbish one, and now she

knew it.



So public opinion went on being indignant over Molly's conduct. She

could stoop to work for money, and yet she pretended to hold herself

above the most rising young man in Hoosic Falls, and all just because

there was a difference in their grandmothers!



Was this the reason at the bottom of it? The very bottom? I cannot be

certain, because I have never been a girl myself. Perhaps she thought

that work is not a stooping, and that marriage may be. Perhaps--But all

I really know is that Molly Wood continued cheerfully to embroider

the handkerchiefs, make the preserves, teach the pupils--and firmly to

reject Sam Bannett.



Thus it went on until she was twenty. There certain members of her

family began to tell her how rich Sam was going to be--was, indeed,

already. It was at this time that she wrote Mrs. Balaam her doubts and

her desires as to migrating to Bear Creek. It was at this time also

that her face grew a little paler, and her friends thought that she was

overworked, and Mrs. Flynt feared she was losing her looks. It was at

this time, too, that she grew very intimate with that great-aunt over at

Dunbarton, and from her received much comfort and strengthening.



"Never!" said the old lady, "especially if you can't love him."



"I do like him," said Molly; "and he is very kind."



"Never!" said the old lady again. "When I die, you'll have

something--and that will not be long now."



Molly flung her arms around her aunt, and stopped her words with a kiss.

And then one winter afternoon, two years later, came the last straw.



The front door of the old house had shut. Out of it had stepped the

persistent suitor. Mrs. Flynt watched him drive away in his smart

sleigh.



"That girl is a fool!" she said furiously; and she came away from her

bedroom window where she had posted herself for observation.



Inside the old house a door had also shut. This was the door of Molly's

own room. And there she sat, in floods of tears. For she could not bear

to hurt a man who loved her with all the power of love that was in him.



It was about twilight when her door opened, and an elderly lady came

softly in.



"My dear," she ventured, "and you were not able--"



"Oh, mother!" cried the girl, "have you come to say that too?"



The next day Miss Wood had become very hard. In three weeks she

had accepted the position on Bear Creek. In two months she started,

heart-heavy, but with a spirit craving the unknown.



More

;