Free The Finishing School by Gail Godwin

school day in its fume-filled interior with several dozen kids whose voices, as they rose in pitch as the bus grew more crowded in the morning, and fell into murmurs between friends as it emptied inthe afternoon, seemed almost foreign in their rough consonants and different cadences. Because this bus now took me, twice a day, five days a week, past a house that grew more and more interesting to me.
    In the mornings I would take a window seat on the left side of the bus and wait for those few seconds when, after Ed Cristiana and his sister climbed aboard and the bus gathered speed for the childless stretch of Old Clove Road, the DeVane house came into sight.
    I would stare intensely, trying to memorize details. Then, in the afternoons, I would take a window seat on the right side of the bus and concentrate all my attention toward those few seconds when the bus rumbled past the house.
    I should mention that, the day after I had met Ursula in the hut, I shortened my afternoon bike rides on Old Clove Road. Now I went only as far as the hill
before
the Cristianas’ horse farm came into view. This was because I did not care to face the horsebreeder with his knowing eyes again, after he had seen me watching the horses. But even if that event had not occurred, I would have stopped short of the DeVane house, which was half a mile farther along the winding road. And I certainly would not have returned to the hut where I had burst in on Ursula reading, even though she had said, at the last, “Next time you drop by, bring your suit.” Anyone who suffers from shyness will understand me. I had decided that our next meeting would have to occur by chance, and then if she had really meant it she would let me know. The dream I had had about her had given her an added, a mystical dimension, and I felt we were fated to know each other because I had dreamed about her in such a way. Even then, I took my dreams seriously, and I knew the difference between ordinary dreams, which mixed together all sorts of leavings from the day before, and important dreams, which, in some wonderfully economical way, seemed to be able to solve a problem, or at least illuminate that problem, by combining a simple, often strange and symbolic scenario with powerful feelings. The powerful feelings that remained with me after one of these dreams were the proof that it had been an important dream.
    And after I had dreamed of the house with grassy floors and Ursula’s hand on my shoulder and her voice telling me this was good, not bad, I knew that she belonged to me. I never doubted that a subsequent meeting would soon come, and I almost enjoyed delaying it because of the added significance it would now take on.
    Of course, if Mr. Cristiana hadn’t seen me watching the horses, I would have turned around at my usual spot that day and gone home, leaving Ursula bored by Proust and wishing vainly for something unexpected. But, as I interpreted it—and my lonely, undemanding life allowed me pleanty of time to fantasize and interpret—fate had intervened once and would surely do so again. Meanwhile, I could study the house.
    When I first saw it, I was disappointed. Something Aunt Mona had said had put different pictures in my head. Yet all she had said was that it was one of the original stone houses built by the Huguenots, and that it was right on the road. But the “old houses” I had been taken to see—the grand, ruined plantations I had visited with my grandfather when he went out on his field trips to research the family life of slaves, the famous Revolutionary house across the street from ours that my grandmother’s club had helped restore—did not prepare me to be impressed by the plain, lonely-looking house with yellowed mortar holding together the crude, uneven gray stones. There was an austere dignity about its old, plain facade, but it was in no way beautiful or grand. It had two stories, though the upper one, with its narrow dormers, looked like an