This had necessarily brought him into close
relations with the people of Red Wing, who had welcomed Mollie
with an interest half proprietary in its character. Was she not
_their_ Miss Mollie? Had she not lived in the old "Or'nary,"
taught in their school, advised, encouraged, and helped them? They
flocked around her, each reminding her of his identity by recalling
some scene or incident of her past life, or saying, with evident
pride, "Miss Mollie, I was one of your scholars--I was."
She did not repel their approaches, nor deny their claim to her
attention. She recognized it as a duty that she should still minister
to their wants, and do what she could for their elevation. And,
strangely enough, the good people of Horsford did not rebel nor cast
her off for so doing. The rich wife of Hesden Le Moyne, the queen
of the growing Kansas town, driving in her carriage to the colored
school-house, and sitting as lady patroness upon the platform, was
an entirely different personage, in their eyes, from the Yankee girl
who rode Midnight up and down the narrow streets, and who wielded
the pedagogic sceptre in the log school-house that Nimbus had built.
She could be allowed to patronize the colored school; indeed, they
rather admired her for doing so, and a few of them now and then went
with her, especially on occasions of public interest, and wondered
at the progress that had been made by that race whose capacity they
had always denied.
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