His Own
People," she repeated slowly. "Do you understand that?" The class
sat stolidly silent. Desire's eye rested again upon the little girl
with the prim mouth.
"Ma says 'dopting anyone's a terrible risk," said the prim one.
"Like as not they'll never say thank yuh." . . .
CHAPTER XXIII
"And that," said Desire later in the day as she related her
experiences to the professor, "that was the idea with which I left
them! I shan't have to teach again, shall I, Benis?"
Her husband smiled. "No. I should think more would be a
superfluity."
"They'll say I'm a heathen. I know they will. You don't realize how
serious it is. Think how your prestige will suffer."
"It has suffered already. Only yesterday Mrs. Walkem, the laundress,
told Aunt that your--er--peculiarities were a judgment on me for
'tryin' to find out them things in folkses minds which God has hid
away a-purpose.'"
"But I'm in earnest, Benis--more or less."
"Let it be less, then. My dear girl, you don't really think that
Bainbridge disturbs me?"
"N-no. But it disturbs me. A little. I am so different from all
these people, your friends. And being different is rather--lonely."
"It is," he agreed. "But it is also stimulating."
"I used to think," she went on, following her own thought, "that I
was different because my life was different. I thought that if I
could ever live with people, just as we live here, with everything
normal and everyday, the strangeness would drop away.
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