Doreen wanted to hate Rachel for holding the hearts of both her brothers, but she could not, for Rachel was so genuinely fond of all the Davises, so gay and warm a companion, and so sensibly admiring of both the Davis brothers, although it was Adam she adored. She loved Edna too, and that spring for the first time she and Doreen went along with Edna and Sarah for the day of work on the family graves, the younger women doing most of the low, kneeling chores, Sarah and Edna strolling among the graves and reviewing family history. Felix’s grave had still a new and vulnerable look, and they cared for it with special gentleness. When they were two together, Doreen had naught but affectionate feelings for the younger girl. When they were all together and she saw the anguished love in James’s eyes as he looked at Rachel and Adam, then Doreen wished for impossible things, such as James’s finding her own love enough, and not minding that he could never have Rachel too.

One day two of the girls who were old enough to quit school for good but had begged to stay on because of their extravagant affection for Selma, brought her a bunch of violets they had just picked in the woods. Selma put them in a glass of water and kept them on her desk all day. And they all knew it was spring.

Selma had become a dedicated teacher. As a child she had felt a special affinity for the Negroes on the plantation, and now after her years of comparative isolation, she took them into her life again, and they made her bloom and blossom. Sarah had been right to say that she would make a good teacher. Shy or indifferent with most of her peers, she came alive when she saw the young children of the slaves before her, themselves shy and at first afraid of school. To tell them, to show them, to teach them, to see them learn, became her sustaining joy. She loved their innocence, and she administered to their ignorance in such an unforcing way that the cleverest of them advanced quickly, like baby birds learning to fly on the first try, and having been led by her into learning, subsequently led her into whole new skies of the mind and heart.

As Sarah had been right about Selma, so too had Roman been right about Pauline: she became an excellent disciplinarian. Pauline had a precise, just mind that enjoyed making judgments. She punished, she praised; and she was never uncertain of which to do, nor the extent of the doing. She liked the children, but she was not sentimental about them as Selma tended to be. Her precautionary suspicion made them respect her even as it amused them, although they would never love her as they did Selma.