For two weeks Kate threw herself into the business of teaching
with all her power. She succeeded in so interesting herself and
her pupils that she was convinced she had done a wise thing.
Marriage did not interfere with her teaching; she felt capable and
independent so long as she had her salary. George was working and
working diligently, to prepare for winter, whenever she was
present or could see results. With her first month's salary she
would buy herself a warm coat, a wool suit, an extra skirt for
school, and some waists. If there was enough left, she would have
another real hat. Then for the remainder of the year she would
spend only for the barest necessities and save to help toward a
home something like Nancy Ellen's. Whenever she thought of Nancy
Ellen and Robert there was a choking sensation in her throat, a
dull ache where she had been taught her heart was located.
For two weeks everything went as well as Kate hoped: then Mrs.
Holt began to show the results of having been partially bottled
up, for the first time in her life. She was careful to keep to
generalities which she could claim meant nothing, if anything she
said was taken up by either George or Kate. George was too lazy
to quarrel unless he was personally angered; Kate thought best to
ignore anything that did not come in the nature of a direct
attack. So long as Mrs. Holt could not understand how some folks
could see their way to live off of other folks, or why a girl who
had a chance to marry a fortune would make herself a burden to a
poor man, Kate made the mistake of ignoring her. Thus emboldened
she soon became personal. It seemed as if she spent her spare
time and mental force thinking up suggestive, sarcastic things to
say, where Kate could not help hearing them. She paid no
attention unless the attack was too mean and premeditated; but to
her surprise she found that every ugly, malicious word the old
woman said lodged in her brain and arose to confront her at the
most inopportune times -- in the middle of a recitation or when
she roused enough to turn over in her bed at night. The more
vigorously she threw herself into her school work, the more she
realized a queer lassitude, creeping over her. She kept squaring
her shoulders, lifting her chin, and brushing imaginary cobwebs
from before her face.
The final Friday evening of the month, she stopped at the post
office and carried away with her the bill for her Leghorn hat,
mailed with nicely conceived estimate as to when her first check
would be due. Kate visited the Trustee, and smiled grimly as she
slipped the amount in an envelope and gave it to the hack driver
to carry to Hartley on his trip the following day. She had
intended all fall to go with him and select a winter headpiece
that would be no discredit to her summer choice, but a sort of
numbness was in her bones; so she decided to wait until the coming
week before going. She declined George's pressing invitation to
go along to Aunt Ollie's and help load and bring home a part of
his share of their summer's crops, on the ground that she had some
work to prepare for the coming week.