Such persons I do not wish to meet.
I did not immediately fix a date for my departure, for it was necessary
for me to consider my grandmother's feelings and welfare, and arrange to
make her as happy as possible while I should be gone. In the mean time,
it was of course necessary that I should take air and exercise; and
while doing this one morning in a pretty lane, just out of the village,
a figure in the House of Martha gray came into sight a little distance
ahead of me. Her back was toward me, and she was walking slower than I
was. "Now, then," thought I, "here is a proof of the awkwardness of my
position here. Even in a little walk like this, I must run up against
one of those sisters. I must pass her, or turn around and go back, for I
shall not slow up, and appear to be dogging her footsteps. But I shall
not turn back,--that does not suit me." Consequently I walked on, and
soon overtook the woman in gray. She did not turn her head as I
approached, for the sisters are taught not to turn their heads to look
at people. After all, it would be easy enough for me to adopt the same
rule, and to pass her without turning my head, or paying the slightest
attention to her. This was the manner indeed in which the general public
was expected to act toward the inmates of the House of Martha when met
outside their institution.
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