* * * * *
One morning early last summer Fannie Penney was driving home from town,
with a rather lopsided load of groceries on the back of the buckboard.
Fanny did not enjoy these weekly trips for groceries, but she did not
rebel, as her sisters did; and though she had aspirations, they had not
developed as quickly in her as in the others, for she was considered
already an old maid (a state that in the country, strangely enough, sets
in long before it does in the city, often beginning quite at noonday) at
the time the Bluff colony began to attract attention.
The Penney family live in a plain but substantial house on the main road,
a little way north of the village, where Mr. Penney combines farming, a
blacksmith's shop, and a small line of groceries, for the benefit of his
family. Up to the present time this family has jogged along at a fairly
comfortable pace, only one daughter, the youngest, Mollie, having so far
escaped from the traditional female employments of the region as to spend
a season in New York, supplementing the grammar school education by a
course in elocution, with Delsarte accompaniments. When she returned she
gave her old friends to understand that she was thoroughly misunderstood
by her family; also, that she was now to be called Marie and preferably
Miss, hinted that she was soon going on a professional tour, and
condescendingly agreed to give a free recital at a Sunday-school
entertainment.
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