Free A Distant Shore by Kate Hewitt Page B

to accomplish far more now than they used to. Why, look at Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—she helped to start The Temple School with Mr. Alcott, and only this year she has started her Foreign Library, run out of her very own living room!”
    Isobel managed a tight smile. “Her parents’ living room, I believe.” Although she had never met Miss Peabody, she was well acquainted with the woman’s rather notorious exploits. The Temple School was considered liberal enough to have become ridiculous, and the Peabodys were caught up in the recent fashion of Transcendentalism, which Isobel’s far more conservative parents would never condone. In any case, Isobel had no wish to run a library out of her living room, or debate philosophy with other ‘free thinkers’. She wanted a husband, maybe even a child. The kind of life most women took for granted.
    “Still,” Margaret continued, ever the reformer, “Dr. Channing himself reads the paper there, and lawyers and professors discuss—”
    “I have no wish or talent to start a salon,” Isobel interjected flatly. “the First School’s more modest aims are more to my liking.”
    Margaret pursed her lips. “Yet you do not wish to continue?”
    Isobel suppressed a sigh. This conversation was not going as she had hoped or planned. She knew Margaret possessed more intellectual curiosity than she did; her sister-in-law sometimes socialized with the less radical of the Trascendentalists, and enjoyed discussing a variety of topics from poetry to politics. Meanwhile, Isobel acknowledged grimly, she simply wanted to marry. “It is not that I wish to stop teaching,” she finally said, “but that I wish for more.”
    Margaret wrinkled her brow in confusion. “More?”
    “Yes. More.” Why, Isobel wondered, was it so hard for her family to understand? Were they simply so cushioned from the reality of a life of loneliness, with their spouses and children around them? Could no one understand how she felt? She took a deep breath. “There is a list,” she began, and Margaret leaned forward, curiosity sparking in her eyes.
    “Go on.”
    Quickly, her face flushing with a humiliation she could not help but feel, Isobel told her of Mr. Anderson’s list and both her ambition and difficulty to be named on it.
    “You wish to marry a missionary?” Margaret said, her tone incredulous. “Isobel, you might live in the rudest sort of place! In a grass hut, even!”
    Isobel gazed at her sister-in-law levelly. “I might.”
    “And you would be willing to forsake the comforts of known society for such a thing?” Margaret pressed, sounding half-horrified, half-fascinated.
    “Yes.” In truth Isobel had not attempted to envision her life as a missionary’s wife too closely. She could certainly not see herself in a grass hut. But she would have time to consider such things later, when she’d actually agreed to marry a missionary. When she’d found a man who possessed gentleness and humor, and that still seemed like a distant day indeed. Getting her name on that list—finally having hope —was the extent of her ambition at this point.
    “But if your father forbids it…” Margaret began slowly, trailing off as she looked helplessly at Isobel.
    “I seem to remember,” Isobel said quietly, “that you went against your own father’s wishes, once upon a time.”
    Margaret blushed and looked away, a small smile playing about her mouth. Although it was before Isobel had even met her, she recalled the story of her brother Henry and Margaret’s courtship well enough. Margaret’s father had refused to allow Margaret to be included in her brother’s tutorials back in Scotland, and without his knowledge or approval she had sought her own education—and engaged Henry as her tutor.
    “So I did,” Margaret said slowly, “and I’ve never had any cause to regret it. But even so, Isobel, I’m afraid I don’t see what that has to do with your present situation.”
    “I thought,” Isobel said,