“Here we are,” her uncle exclaimed, as Patience appeared, driving Bedelia.  “Do you know,” he said, as he and Hilary turned out into the wide village street, “I haven’t seen the schoolhouse yet?”

“We can go around that way.  It isn’t much of a building,” Hilary answered.

“I suppose it serves its purpose.”

“It is said to be a very good school for the size of the place.”  Hilary turned Bedelia up the little by-road, leading to the old weather-beaten schoolhouse, standing back from the road in an open space of bare ground.

“You and Pauline are through here?” her uncle asked.

“Paul is.  I would’ve been this June, if I hadn’t broken down last winter.”

“You will be able to go on this fall?”

“Yes, indeed.  Dr. Brice said so the other day.  He says, if all his patients got on so well, by not following his advice, he’d have to shut up shop, but that, fortunately for him, they haven’t all got a wise uncle down in New York, to offer counter-advice.”

“Each in his turn,” Mr. Shaw remarked, adding, “and Pauline considers herself through school?”

“I—­I suppose so.  I know she would like to go on—­but we’ve no higher school here and—­She read last winter, quite a little, with father.  Pauline’s ever so clever.”

“Supposing you both had an opportunity—­for it must be both, or neither, I judge—­and the powers that be consented—­how about going away to school this winter?”

Hilary dropped the reins.  “Oh!” she cried, “you mean—­”

“I have a trick of meaning what I say,” her uncle said, smiling at her.

“I wish I could say—­what I want to—­and can’t find words for—­” Hilary said.

“We haven’t consulted the higher authorities yet, you know.”

“And—­Oh, I don’t see how mother could get on without us, even if—­”

“Mothers have a knack at getting along without a good many things—­when it means helping their young folks on a bit,” Mr. Shaw remarked.  “I’ll have a talk with her and your father to-night.”

That evening, pacing up and down the front veranda with his brother, Mr. Shaw said, with his customary abruptness, “You seem to have fitted in here, Phil,—­perhaps, you were in the right of it, after all.  I take it you haven’t had such a hard time, in some ways.”

The minister did not answer immediately.  Looking back nearly twenty years, he told himself, that he did not regret that early choice of his.  He had fitted into the life here; he and his people had grown together.  It had not always been smooth sailing and more than once, especially the past year or so, his narrow means had pressed him sorely, but on the whole, he had found his lines cast in a pleasant place, and was not disposed to rebel against his heritage.

“Yes,” he said, at last, “I have fitted in; too easily, perhaps.  I never was ambitious, you know.”

“Except in the accumulating of books,” his brother suggested.