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In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #26549.
The work is a juvenile fiction tale set in a boarding‑school milieu, introduced through a somber domestic scene. It opens with Clayton Reeve, a widower in his mid‑thirties, wrestling with grief and the practical dilemma of placing his young daughter Toinette in an “ideal” school while his career carries him abroad. The narrative establishes his emotional turmoil, the loss of his wife, and his resolve to send his daughter to the Misses Carter academy, foreshadowing the influence that the school will have on her development. The opening passages also hint at the broader social context, catalogues of schools, the expectations of genteel families, and the tension between parental affection and institutional education, setting the stage for a story that will follow Toinette’s years at the boarding school and the consequences of her father’s decision.
The prose reflects an early‑20th‑century sensibility, with a formal, descriptive style that blends sentimental interiority and social commentary. The narrator’s voice is omniscient yet intimately attuned to the characters’ feelings, offering both lyrical reflection and straightforward exposition. Readers who enjoy richly detailed domestic dramas, especially those exploring the dynamics of loss, duty, and adolescent growth within a boarding‑school setting, will find this novel engaging. Its focus on the interplay between parental authority and the formative environment of a girls’ school will particularly appeal to those interested in historical portrayals of education and family life.
The opening · free to read
WHICH SHALL IT BE?
"And now that I have them, how am I to decide? That is the question?"
The speaker was a fine-looking man about thirty-five years of age, seated before a large writing-table in a handsomely appointed library. It was littered with catalogues, pamphlets, letters and papers sent from dozens of schools, and from the quantity of them one would fancy that every school in the country was represented. This was the result of an advertisement in the "Times" for a school in which young children are received, carefully trained, thoroughly taught, and which can furnish unquestionable references regarding its social standing and other qualifications.
It was a handsome, but seriously perplexed, face which bent over the letters, and more than once the shapely hand was raised to the puckered forehead and the fingers thrust impatiently through the golden brown hair, setting it on end and causing its owner to look more distracted than ever.
"Poor, wee lassie, you little realize what a problem you are to me. Would to God the one best qualified to solve it could have been spared to you," and the handsome head fell forward upon the hands, as tears of bitter anguish flooded the brown eyes.
Can anything be more pathetic than a strong man's tears? And Clayton Reeve's were wrung from an almost despairing heart.
For ten years his life had been a dream of happiness. At twenty-five he had married a beautiful, talented girl, who made his home as nearly perfect as a home can be made, and when, three years later, a little daughter, her mother's living image, came to live with them, he felt that he had no more to ask for. Seven years slipped away, as only years of perfect happiness can slip, and then came the end. The beautiful wife and mother went to sleep forever, leaving the dear husband and lovely little daughter alone. For six months Mr. Reeve strove to fill the mother's place, but until she was taken from him he had never realized how perfectly and completely his almost idolized wife had filled his home, conducting all so quietly and gracefully that even those nearest and dearest never suspected how much thought she had given to their comfort until her firm, yet gentle, rule was missed.
Happily, Toinette was too young to fully appreciate her loss, and although she grieved in her childish way for the sweet, smiling mother who had so loved her, it was a child's blessed evanescent grief, which could find consolation in her pets and dollies, and--blessed boon--forget.
But Clayton Reeve never forgot, not for one moment; and though the six months had in a measure softened his grief, his sense of loss and loneliness increased each day, until at last he could no longer endure the sight of the home which they together had planned and beautified.
Unfortunately, neither he nor his wife had near relatives. She had been an only child whose parents had died shortly after her marriage, and such distant relatives as remained to him were far away in England, his native land. His greatest problem was the little daughter. Nursemaids and nursery-governesses were to be had by the score, but nursemaids and nursery-governesses were one thing with a mistress at the head of the household and quite another without one, as, during the past six months, Mr. Reeve had learned to his sorrow, and the poor man had more than once been driven to the verge of insanity by their want of thought, or even worse.
At last he determined to close his house, place Toinette in some "ideal" school, and travel for six months, or even longer, little dreaming that the six months would lengthen into as many years ere he again saw her. The trip begun for diversion was soon merged into one for business interests, as the prominent law firm of which he was a member had matters of importance to be looked after upon the other side of the water, and were only too glad to have so efficient a person to do it.
So, before he realized it, half the globe divided him from the sunny-haired little daughter whom he had placed in the supposed ideal school, chosen after deliberate consideration from those he had corresponded with.
But this anticipates a trifle.
As he sits in the library of his big house, a house which seems so like some beautiful instrument lacking the touch of the master hand to draw forth its sweetest and best, the sound of little dancing feet can be heard through the half-open door, and a sweet little voice calls out:
"Papa, Papa Clayton. Where is my precious Daddy?" and a golden-haired child running into the room throws herself into his arms, clasps her own about his neck and nestles her head upon his shoulder.
The child raised her head, and, looking at him with her big brown eyes, eyes so like his own, said, reproachfully: "You are not an old Daddy; Stanton (the butler) is old, you are just my own, own Papa Clayton, and mamma used to say that you couldn't grow old 'cause she and I loved you so hard."
Mr. Reeve quivered slightly at the child's words, and with a surprised look she asked:
"Are you cold, dear Daddy? It isn't cold here, is it?"
"No, not in the room, Heart's-Ease, but right here," laying his hand upon his heart.
The child regarded him questioningly with her big, earnest eyes, and said:
"Did it grow cold because mamma went so sound asleep?"
"I'm afraid so; but now let us talk about something else: I've some news for you, but do not know how you will like it; sit still while I tell it to you," and he began to unfold his plan regarding the school.
The school was chosen and Toinette placed therein. What momentous results often follow a simple act. When Clayton Reeve placed his little girl with the Misses Carter, intending to leave her there a few months, and seek the change of scene so essential to his health, he did not realize that her whole future would be more or less influenced by the period she was destined to spend there. No brighter, sunnier, happier disposition could have been met with than Toinette's when she entered the school; none more restless, distrustful and dissatisfied than her's when she left it, nearly six years later.
If we are held accountable for sins of omission, as well as sins of commission, certainly the Misses Carter had a long account to meet.
Like many others who had chosen that vocation, they were utterly incapable of filling it either to their own credit or the advantage of those they taught. While perfectly capable of imparting the knowledge they had obtained from books, and of making any number of rules to be followed as those of the "Medes and Persians," they did not, in the very remotest degree, possess the insight into character, the sympathy with their pupils so essential in true teachers.
It is not alone to learn that which is contained between the covers of a book that our girls are sent to school or college, but also to gather in the thousand and one things untaught by either books or words. These must be absorbed as the flowers absorb the sunshine and dew, growing lovelier, sweeter and more attractive each day and never suspecting it.
And so the shaping of Toinette's character, so beautifully begun by the wise, gentle mother, passed into other and less sensitive hands. It was like a delicate bit of pottery, the pride of the potter's heart, upon which he had spent uncountable hours, and was fashioning so skilfully, almost fearing to touch it lest he mar instead of add to its beauty; dreading to let others approach lest, lacking his own nice conceptions, they bring about a result he had so earnestly sought to avoid, and the vase lose its perfect symmetry. But, alas! called from his work never to return, it is completed by less skilful hands, a less delicate conception, and, while the result is pleasing, the perfect harmony of proportion is wanting, and those who see it feel conscious of its incompleteness, yet scarcely know why.
We will skip over those six miserable years, so fraught with small trials, jealousies, deceptions and an ever-increasing distrust, to a certain Saturday morning in December.
The early winter had been an exceptionally trying one, and Toinette, now nearly fourteen years old, had seen and learned many things which can only be taught by experience. She had seen that in some people's eyes the possession of money can atone for many shortcomings in character, and that certain lines of conduct may be condoned in a girl who has means, while they are condemned in a girl who has not; that she herself had many liberties and many favors shown her which were denied some of her companions, although those companions were quite as well born and bred as herself, and with all the latent nobility of her character did she scorn not only the favors but those who showed them, and often said to her roommate, Cicely Powell: "If I chose to steal the very Bible out of chapel, Miss Carter would only say, 'Naughty Toinette,' in that smirking way of hers, and then never do a single thing; but if Barbara Ellsworth even looks sideways she simply annihilates her. I hate it, for it is only because Barbara is poor and I'm--well, Miss Carter likes to have the income I yield; I'm a profitable bit of 'stock,' and must be well cared for," and a burning flush rose to the girl's sensitive cheeks.
It was a bitter speech for one so young, and argued an all too intimate acquaintance with those who did not bear the mark patent of "gentlewoman."
The six years had wrought many changes in the little child, both in mind and body, for, even though one had been cramped, and lacked a healthful development, the other had blossomed into a very beautiful young girl, who would have gladdened any parent's heart. She was neither tall nor short, but beautifully proportioned. Her head, with its wealth of sunny, wavy hair, was carried in the same stately manner which had always been so marked a characteristic in her father, and gave to her a rather dignified and reserved air for her years. The big brown eyes looked you squarely in the face, although latterly they had a slightly distrustful expression. Hurry home, Clayton Reeve, before it becomes habitual. The nose was straight and sensitive, and the mouth the saving grace of the face, for nothing could alter its soft, beautiful curves, and the lips continued to smile as they had done in early childhood, when there was cause for smiles only. The mother's finger seemed to rest there, all invisible to others, and curve the corners upward, as though in apology for the hardened expression gradually creeping over the rest of the face.
It is difficult to understand how a parent can leave a child wholly to the care of strangers for so long a period as Mr. Reeve left Toinette, but one thing after another led him further and further from home, first to Southern Europe, then across the Mediterranean into wilder, newer scenes, where nations were striving mightily. Then, just as he began to think that ere long his own land would welcome him, news reached him of trouble in a land still nearer the rising sun, and his firm needed their interests in that far land carefully guarded. So thither he journeyed. But at last all was adjusted, and, with a heart beating high with hope, he started for his own dear land and dearer daughter.
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