The farewells at the railway station were brief.  They were very hard to say and neither the partners nor Mary-’Gusta could trust themselves to talk more than was necessary.  The train drew up beside the platform; then it moved on.  A hand waved from the car window; Shadrach and Zoeth waved in return.  The rear car disappeared around the curve by Solomon Higgins’ cranberry shanty.

Mr. Hamilton sighed heavily.

“She’s gone, Shadrach,” he said.  “Mary-’Gusta’s gone.”

Shadrach echoed the sigh.

“Yes, she’s gone,” he agreed.  “I feel as if the best part of you and me had gone along with her.  Well, t’other parts have got to go back to the store and wait on customers, I presume likely.  Heave ahead and let’s do it.  Ah, hum!  I cal’late we’d ought to be thankful we’ve got work to do, Zoeth.  It’ll help take up our minds.  There are goin’ to be lonesome days for you and me, shipmate.”

There were lonely days for Mary-’Gusta also, those of that first month at Mrs. Wyeth’s and at the Misses Cabot’s school.  For the first time in her life she realized what it meant to be homesick.  But in the letters which she wrote to her uncles not a trace of the homesickness was permitted to show and little by little its keenest pangs wore away.  She, too, was thankful for work, for the study which kept her from thinking of other things.

The Misses Cabot—­their Christian names were Priscilla and Hortense—­she found to be middle-aged maiden ladies, eminently prim and proper, and the educational establishment over which they presided a sort of Protestant nunnery ruled according to the precepts of the Congregational Church and the New England aristocracy.  Miss Priscilla was tall and thin and her favorite author was Emerson; she quoted Emerson extensively and was certain that real literature died when he did.  Miss Hortense was younger, plumper, and more romantic.  She quoted Longfellow and occasionally Oliver Wendell Holmes, although she admitted she considered the latter rather too frivolous at times.  Both sisters were learned, dignified, and strict disciplinarians.  Also, in the eyes of both a male person younger than forty-five was labeled “Danger—­Keep Away.”  But one creature of the masculine gender taught in their school; he was white-haired Doctor Barnes, professor of the dead languages.  It was the prevailing opinion among the scholars that Doctor Barnes, when at home, occupied an apartment in the Greek Antiquity section of the Art Museum, where he slept and ate surrounded by the statues and busts of his contemporaries.

As for the scholars themselves, there were about forty of them, girls—­or young ladies:  the Misses Cabot invariably referred to and addressed them as “young ladies”—­from Boston and New York and Philadelphia, even from Chicago and as far south as Baltimore.  Almost all were the daughters of well-to-do parents, almost all had their homes in cities.  There were very few who, like Mary-’Gusta, had lived all their lives in the country.  Some were pretty, some were not; some were giddy and giggly, some solemn and studious, some either according to mood; some were inclined to be snobbish, others simple and “everyday.”  In short, the school was like almost any school of its kind.