The Pastor's Wife - Section 11

In which a gentle garden of domestic hopes and schemes is planted by a mother striving to revive herself and her children amid the cool and often unyielding soil of village life; yet the children’s reluctant spirits and the clearing of the nest by the State lead her to discover an inward wellspring of strength and resolve to grow alone. In the pause left by their absence, she contemplates the widening of her own mind and the delicate pursuit of intellectual companionship, set against the quiet disapproval of those around her and the stubborn, slow turning of her world.