It hardly seemed direct to poor Verena, perhaps, who,
in the crowded street-car which deposited her finally at Miss
Chancellor's door, had to stand up all the way, half suspended by a
leathern strap from the glazed roof of the stifling vehicle, like some
blooming cluster dangling in a hothouse. She was used, however, to these
perpendicular journeys, and though, as we have seen, she was not
inclined to accept without question the social arrangements of her time,
it never would have occurred to her to criticise the railways of her
native land. The promptness of her visit to Olive Chancellor had been an
idea of her mother's, and Verena listened open-eyed while this lady, in
the seclusion of the little house in Cambridge, while Selah Tarrant was
"off," as they said, with his patients, sketched out a line of conduct
for her. The girl was both submissive and unworldly, and she listened to
her mother's enumeration of the possible advantages of an intimacy with
Miss Chancellor as she would have listened to any other fairy-tale. It
was still a part of the fairy-tale when this zealous parent put on with
her own hands Verena's smart hat and feather, buttoned her little jacket
(the buttons were immense and gilt), and presented her with twenty cents
to pay her car-fare.
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