Bessie Wynne did all the hard things that were necessary to the raising of the child; the disciplining, the punishments. But Bessie in her wisdom and contentment was satisfied to have Theron appear to be benevolent, provident, loving, as though in his place as father and husband he were above the hard things. He in turn conceded nearly all authority to Bessie. “It’s no use going to your father,” she would say to the child. “He’s as strict as I am.” The child was taught not to test her father’s strictness, and the myth became in a practical sense a reality: Agnes believed that her father was the true source of strength in the family, and his favors and amiability were made to seem like rewards.
It was a quiet household, wherever they happened to be living, in whatever Company house they inhabited. Until Theron was an assistant superintendent the Wynnes had no hired girl; once a week they had a woman in to do the washing, and Agnes was brought up to help with the household chores. Later there was always a hired girl as well as a Monday-and-Tuesday woman for the washing and ironing. Theron paid no rent in the Company houses, and nearly everything he needed for himself and his family could be bought wholesale through the Company stores—food, clothing, their Chickering upright piano, his fishing tackle, his art supplies. Coal for their stove and furnace was delivered free of charge, and Theron Wynne had the use of a horse and buggy or cutter as a privilege of his rank. The social standing of the family was doubly automatic; they were Wynnes, and Theron Wynne’s jobs were always considered office jobs.
Agnes was sixteen before her second cousin Tom Wynne got what he called a real good look at her, and what he saw he liked. “Theron, you know who this girl looks like? She looks like Aunt Agnes.”
“Well, that’s who we named her after, Cousin Tom.”
“You look like your grandmother, girl. Pity you never saw her. You remember Theron’s mother, Bessie?”
“I sure do, Cousin Tom. But I don’t want you to spoil this one telling her she resembled Grandmother Wynne. Don’t want to turn her head.”
“They won’t turn this one’s head, will they, girl? You look to me like a pretty sensible young lady. Where you got her in school, Bessie?”
“Here. Hilltop High School.”
“Uh-huh. What are you taking, girl?”
“Which course? The four-year. I’m a junior.”
“I’m in favor of that. You intend to give her a year away at boarding school, Theron?”
“After she finishes High, we might.”
“You didn’t say what subjects you’re taking, girl.”
“The regular four-year course. This year I’m taking geometry. Plane geometry. Latin—Cicero, that is. English. First-year French. High School Civics. And drawing.”
“Keep you busy? You passing everything?”
“Yes sir,” said the girl.
“Tell Cousin Tom,” said Theron Wynne. “She has the highest marks of any girl in her class, and the best of anybody, boys or girls, in Latin and French.”
“Conduct? I guess I don’t have to ask that.”
“Oh—all right, I guess,” said the girl.
“Tell him, he wants to know,” said Theron Wynne. “She has the highest mark in Deportment, too. That’s Conduct. She never had anything but ‘A,’ all through High.”
“I knew it. You can tell by looking at her. Theron, I recommend you and Bessie don’t wait till she finishes Hilltop High. Send her to boarding school. Young lady, will you excuse yourself while your father and mother and I have a talk?”
“Yes sir. Excuse me,” said Agnes, leaving them.
“Do you realize this is the only female Wynne of her age? Her generation. I’m going to do something for this girl. I like the cut of her jib. Good manners. Neat and clean. And I had no idea she was so smart. You pick out a good school, and I’ll foot the bills.”
“Oh, Cousin Tom . . .” Bessie Wynne began to cry.
“Hell, I put her father through Lafayette and he didn’t disappoint me the way some other relations have. You know who I’m talking about. My own son, yet to do an honest day’s work. The money he cost me, I’d like to see my money do some good for a change. You pick out a good school and we’ll sit down and figure out the cost and I’ll put that money in the Hilltop bank, in case some Union hooligan takes a shot at me.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t do that, Cousin Tom,” said Bessie Wynne.
“They wouldn’t, eh? You must think the Mollies are a thing of the past. Maybe you don’t hear about them so much any more, but I never go anywhere without a pistol in my pocket, let me tell you. The Mollie Maguires had big families, don’t forget, and my brother Albert helped to hang some of them . . . Anyhow, you pick out a school for Agnes, and Theron, you write me a letter.” He brought his voice down to a whisper. “Don’t want her to get interested in boys. Hilltop High School. Boys. Wrong ideas. Calf-love. Marry some Schwakie.”
“I know,” said Bessie Wynne.
“Well, you decide,” said Cousin Tom. “And Theron, I’ll hear from you in a day of two.”
“You bet, Cousin Tom,” said Theron Wynne. “And I wish I knew how to—”
“Good, sensible girl. And has looks, into the bargain,” said Cousin Tom Wynne. “I have to be going.”
Agnes was taken out of Hilltop High after junior year and enrolled at Miss Dawson’s in Overbrook, where, like herself, most of the boarders were girls who had had a year or two in a public high school. The day pupils were the daughters of nearby Overbrook, Chestnut Hill, and Germantown families, and many of them would be leaving Miss Dawson’s for New England and Southern boarding schools for the final two years. As a result there was a constant turnover in the student body that made life interesting for the girls but did not make for efficiency among the teachers. The good ones did not stay long. “This place is like the Broad Street Station,” said one teacher in parting. But to Agnes Wynne and her parents and to the citizens of Hilltop and the other coal towns Miss Dawson’s was a fashionable finishing school that put the finishing school stamp on its girls and set them apart from the girls who were going to Wilson and Goucher and Hood and Bryn Mawr, the bluestockings, who went to college because they wanted to go into competition with men.
Cousin Tom Wynne, for all his admiration of Agnes’s brains, did not volunteer to continue her education, although she graduated from Miss Dawson’s at the head of her class. She had made good, and it was time for her to come home and wait for a suitable husband. Cousin Tom Wynne sponsored her by giving a dance at his house, to which were invited all the coal and lumber and beer and whiskey and legal and medical plutocracy of the area.
George Lockwood was not invited to the dance. Swedish Haven, although it was only a few miles from Gibbsville, was not considered to belong to the coal region. It was the last Pennsylvania Dutch town on the way northward, and Gibbsville was the first coal town. It made no difference that George Lockwood was only half Pennsylvania Dutch; he belonged to Swedish Haven, whatever his name. In Swedish Haven you heard Pennsylvania Dutch spoken more than English; in Gibbsville even the families of German ancestry were letting the patois die, while they adapted themselves to the New England Yankee influence that had always prevailed. George Lockwood, of Swedish Haven, got to the Thomas Wynne dance because he was a Princeton man who was in the Wynneville neighborhood for a Princeton wedding.