And so Miss Smith contemplated many empty desks.
Slowly a sort of fatal inaction seized her. The school went on; daily the dark little cloud of scholars rose up from hill and vale and settled in the white buildings; the hum of voices and the busy movements of industrious teachers filled the day; the office work went on methodically; but back of it all Miss Smith sat half hopeless. It cost five thousand a year to run the school, and this sum she raised with increasingly greater difficulty. Extra and heart-straining effort had been needed to raise the eight hundred dollars additional for interest money on the mortgage last year. Next year it might have to come out of the regular income and thus cut off two teachers. Beyond all this the raising of ten thousand dollars to satisfy the mortgage seemed simply impossible, and Miss Smith sat in fatal resignation, awaiting the coming day.
"It's the Lord's work. I've done what I could. I guess if He wants it to go on, He'll find a way. And if He doesn't--" She looked off across the swamp and was silent.
Then came Zora's letter, simple and brief, but breathing youth and strength of purpose. Miss Smith seized upon it as an omen of salvation. In vain her shrewd New England reason asked: "What can a half-taught black girl do in this wilderness?" Her heart answered back: "What is impossible to youth and resolution?" Let the shabbiness increase; let the debts pile up; let the boarders complain and the teachers gossip--Zora was coming. And somehow she and Zora would find a way.
And Zora came just as the sun threw its last crimson through the black swamp; came and gathered the frail and white-haired woman in her arms; and they wept together. Long and low they talked, far into the soft Southern night; sitting shaded beneath the stars, while nearby blinked the drowsy lights of the girls' dormitory. At last Miss Smith said, rising stiffly: "I forgot to ask about Mrs. Vanderpool. How is she, and where?"
Zora murmured some answer; but as she went to bed in her little white room she sat wondering sadly. Where was the poor spoiled woman? Who was putting her to bed and smoothing the pillow? Who was caring for her, and what was she doing? And Zora strained her eyes Northward through the night.
At this moment, Mrs. Vanderpool, rising from a gala dinner in the brilliant drawing-room of her Lake George mansion, was reading the evening paper which her husband had put into her hands. With startled eyes she caught the impudent headlines: VANDERPOOL DROPPED Senate Refuses to Confirm Todd Insurgents Muster Enough Votes to Defeat Confirmation of President's Nominee Rumored Revenge for Machine's Defeat of Child Labor Bill Amendment.