Read Online Patricia by Grace Livingston Hill - Free Book Online Page B

about.”
    But Patricia was allowed to attend her class meeting in peace.
    â€œAfter all, it can’t last much longer! Only one year, thank goodness!” Mrs. Prentiss said to her friend Mrs. Bellingham.
    â€œWell, I must say you’ve been very patient,” said the Bellingham woman. “I wouldn’t have stood for what you have, allowing a girl as beautiful as Patty to be communized by attending that impossible school. I certainly wouldn’t have stood it for a day. There are things about that school that will cling to that child all her life. It gives her entirely too democratic an outlook. Why, they tell me that one of the graduates this year is nothing more nor less than a hired man on Miller’s farm, and he, my dear, is the one they have selected to give the valedictory address. Imagine it! Giving the highest honor of the school to a mere hired hand on a farm!”
    â€œOh, my dear! How dreadful! But you see, that’s something I hadn’t heard. Thank you for telling me. I don’t suppose Mr. Prentiss knows that. That may make some difference. I shall tell him as soon as he comes home tonight.”
    But to her dismay when she told Mr. Prentiss, he gave her a mildly surprised look.
    â€œWhy, my dear! What’s the matter with that? I clearly remember hearing your father tell me that he himself hired out to a farmer in his youth in order to get enough money to finish out a year of college.”
    â€œMr. Prentiss, you are utterly mistaken!” said the good lady in an irate tone. “My father never was a hired man! It is strange how you are willing to try and drag your family down.”
    â€œThere is nothing demeaning in honest work. It is often uplifting to get back to the soil and down to primitive conditions. In fact, I can think of nothing that would be better for that little prig of a paragon you are always talking about, that young Thorny Bellingham, than to send him to a farm for a couple of years. Let him learn to plow and plant and sow and reap. Let him milk the cows and tend to sheep and chickens. Perhaps it might put some sense into even that pretty little sissy boy.”
    â€œI think you are too insulting, Mr. Prentiss, talking that way about the son of my dearest friend. I think it is contemptible the way you always try to get the better of me.”
    Mrs. Prentiss got out her small elaborate handkerchief and began to wipe her eyes neatly, dabbing at them so that her makeup might not be impaired. Her husband looked at her with cold despairing eyes, at her florid complexion enhanced by brick-red rouge and blue-black shadows under her eyes; at her sleek head that was too childish in its outline for a woman of her years; at the brisk, ruddy wave of her hair, hair that he knew was already graying softly before she had it so deftly treated, and he thought back to the days when he thought he fell in love with her. When her hair was a ruddy gold and her gray eyes bright, not hard and cold as now. When her father had been a poor man and the neat print dresses she wore had seemed beautiful to him.
    He had been glad to be able to give her beautiful expensive garments such as she was wearing now, but as he looked back, those days seemed so much happier. Amelia so utterly more desirable! That time was not so many years removed from the time her father had worked on a farm. Oh, Amelia had climbed too far on his money and rising position, and now she was insisting that his little girl should climb, too, into an artificial life that money could buy but true worth could not always attain.
    He sat there regarding her sternly, sadly, not answering at first. Just letting her talk herself out. And as he watched her he sighed.
    Patricia had come into the house while they were talking and, hearing her mother’s loud excited voice, tiptoed softly into an adjoining room to listen a moment and see what it was all about. These were the days when Patricia was always quaking