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But as for us we are consecrated to art, you know, in the shape of writing. Let us make the utmost of our talents." "Yes, we are consecrated to art," said Beth with a sigh of relief, and began talking of Marie. Since Beth was to leave home in the fall, she did not go away during the summer, and consequently saw much of Marie during the few weeks she stayed at Briarsfield.
Friday morning came, the last day of September, and the train whistled sharply as it steamed around the curve from Briarsfield with Beth at one of the car-windows. It had almost choked her to say good-bye to her father at the station, and she was still straining her eyes to catch the last glimpse of home.
Mrs Martin always took tea with them, and as she talked over Briarsfield gossip to the doctor, Beth, as was her custom, looked silently out of the window upon the green sloping lawn. "Well, Beth, dear," said Dr. Woodburn, "has Mrs. Martin told you that young Arthur Grafton is coming to spend his holidays with us?" "Arthur Grafton! Why, no!" said Beth with pleased surprise. "He is coming.
She belonged to the Students' Volunteer Movement, and as this was her last year at college, Beth thought sometimes a little sorrowfully of the following autumn when she was to leave for India. Beth meant to have her spend a few days at Briarsfield with her next summer. But a good many things were to happen to Beth before the next summer passed.
"You can hardly call time spent that way wasted," she answered. "You will write all the better for it by and by." Then they plunged into one of their old-time literary talks of authors and books and ambitions. Beth loved these talks. There was no one else in Briarsfield she could discuss these matters with like Clarence.
It was a pretty room of Edith's that she took Beth into a pleasing confusion of curtains, books, music, and flowers, with a guitar lying on the coach. There was a photo on the little table that caught Beth's attention. It was Mr. Ashley, the classical master in Briarsfield High School, for Briarsfield could boast a High School.
Stars in the sky above stars in the deep all round and the winds and the waters were still! And she was drifting but whither? "Isn't she pretty?" "She's picturesque looking." "Pretty? picturesque? I think she's ugly!" These were the varied opinions of a group of Briarsfield girls who were at the station when the evening train stopped.
She had begun to love George Eliot like a personal friend; she was her ideal, her model, for Beth had some repute as a literary character in Briarsfield. Not a teacher in the village school but had marked her strong literary powers, and she was not at all slow to believe all the hopeful compliments paid her.
He was in Briarsfield this summer for a few days, but I saw he was changed. He was not like the same Arthur so changed and cold." She sat with a grave look in her grey eyes as Marie lay watching her. "Only once I thought he loved me," she continued; "one night when he looked at me and touched my hand. But the next day he was cold again, and I knew then that he didn't love me any more."
Daddy wouldn't make her go to bed at ten o'clock then; she would write all night if she choose; she would have a little room on purpose, and visitors at Briarsfield would pass by the old rough-cast house and point it out as Beth Woodburn's home, and well, this is enough for a sample of Beth's daydreams.
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