Patience Sparhawk and her Times

Before a week had passed Patience was so busy that her old life slept as heavily as a bear in winter. She passed her difficult examinations and entered the High School, selecting the three years course, which included French, German, mathematics, the sciences, literature, and rhetoric.

The recesses and evenings were spent in study, the afternoons in assisting Miss Tremont; occasionally she snatched an hour to write to her friends in California. Besides the temperance work, she had a class in the church sewing school, kept the books of various societies, and occasionally visited the poor on Hog Heights. The work did not interest her, but she was glad to satisfactorily repay Miss Tremont's hospitality. But had she wished to protest she would have realised its uselessness: she was carried with the tide. It might be said that Miss Tremont was the tide. Her enthusiasm had no reflex action, and tore through obstacles like a mill-race. When night came she was so weary that more than once Patience offered to put her to bed; but the offer was declined with a curious mixture of religious fervour and hauteur. Miss Tremont had none of the ordinary vanity of woman, but she resented the imputation that she could not work for the Lord as ardently at sixty as she had at forty.