Description

Miss Ellen Baily runs a modest school in the brick‑sided basement of her old house on Main Street, where children shuffle down a flagstone path to two small rooms—one for lessons, one for the watchful teacher. The space is scented with crumbs and draped with a red‑cloth table, while a faded print of “Belshazzar’s Feast” watches over the pupils. Outside, the garden is haunted by the figure of Mr. David Baily, a tall, dark‑eyed man who paces the flower beds, forever lost in the memory of his beloved Maria Hastings, who died at seventeen.

The townsfolk whisper that grief has crippled David’s prospects: a clergyman turned librarian, a book‑keeper, even a would‑be boot‑black, each effort ending in failure and rheumatism. Still, he clings to the modest security his sister’s school provides, while the girls at Miss Ellen’s class romanticize his delicate constitution as proof of a “real love.” As the season turns, the quiet rhythm of the school and garden hints at choices that may finally lift David from his endless mourning.