The Argosy — page 297: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

250 HOW KENRICK MARRIED JULIET EUSTIS. A STORY OF AMERICi1N LIFE. By FRANCES E, WADLEIGH. NE of the scholars had been very inattentive and somewhat insubordinate ; the unusual heat had, perhaps, soured her temper; so the weary governess had been compelled to detain her in the schoolroom during the short afternoon recess, and thereby punished herself more than she did the sullen girl. ‘The warm May sun streamed in at the long uncurtained windows, and brought into full relief the dusty floor and highly-varnished desks, the grimy blackboard at which a score of girls had recently been busy with chalk and string, the more or less shabby books carelessly thrust into their racks, and the ‘‘ fagged” look on the young teacher’s face. : “How tired you look, dear Miriam!” exclaimed Rhoda Crosby, a governess in the same school, as she languidly entered the room. ‘““What ashame to have kept one of the girls in! I came to ask you to take a little walk with me, just round the block; we have plenty of time.” ‘Not to-day, thank you,” returned Miriam, “though I should like some fresh air. Oh, Rhoda! don’t you wish that we could go to the sea this vacation?” she added, earnestly. Both Miriam and Rhoda had spent their childhood in a pretty little town on the Atlantic coast, not far from Boston, and after craduating at one of the Massachusetts normal schools, according to the American custom, had journeyed together to the inland town where they were now teaching. Their salaries were not large, as both were young and inexperienced, and would not permit any long or expensive trips during the mid- summer vacation; so the two summers that they had been in Plainford they had contented themselves with three or four weeks in a farmhouse, where the highest attainable hill had an elevation of scarcely eight hundred feet. “The sea! O—h, to hear the waves come thundering in after a storm! to see them break gently in a calm day! to drink in the pure air, that hasn’t seen land since it left Ireland!” answered Rhoda. “Treland! Would not the south of France answer your purpose better?” laughed her companion. | “You are too literal!” rejoined Rhoda; adding, in a lower tone: “Do you never try to forget how much you, as a teacher, are supposed to know? Wouldn’t it be a relief not to feel compelled to be always strictly accurate ?” COMIC LOOKS, (EC)