Una of the Garden

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Lucy Maud Montgomery

Una of the Garden

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During the week he had already spent in Stillwater’s green seclusion and tranquility, Eric’s anger had cooled and his ruffled pride had become smooth. He was ready to laugh at himself. After all, he had made a mistake. There were many lawyers in the world, perhaps too many, but there were not too many good, honest men of business, ready to do clean, big things for the comfort and betterment of humanity, to plan great enterprises and carry them through with brain and courage, to manage and control, to aim high and strike one’s aim. That was what he was fitted for and that was what he would do. Meanwhile, for four more weeks he would teach in the Stillwater school as well and worthily as might be. Eric liked to do all he attempted to do in a reliable, clean-cut fashion, leaving no loose ends. So he planned and thought as he walked along. His plans and thoughts were practical; romantic visions played no part in them. The witchery of the spring was all about him in the earth and air and sky; he felt it and loved it and yielded to it as anyone of clean life and sane pulses must do; but he was not beguiled by it into lightly turning to thoughts of love. It thrilled his ambitions rather than his emotions.

Eric had succeeded to Larry’s abiding place as well as his desk. He boarded with Robert Williamson and his wife, an elderly couple who lived on the hill opposite the school. Eric greatly liked Mrs. Williamson, a quiet woman who looked after him in a motherly way. She talked little and her face was marked by the traces of outlived pain. He liked her husband somewhat less, Robert, or Bob, as he was commonly called despite his sixty years. Williamson was a talkative, gossipy man who liked to have a finger in every one’s pie. They supposed Eric to be a poor college student earning his own way through like Larry West. Eric did not disturb this belief although he said nothing to contribute to it.

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