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weather be what it might; "and," added Rose 'when the wind blows hard I am positively obliged to hold on to the sheets to keep myself in bed!" "A Mount Holyoke freak," said Mrs. Lincoln. "I wish to mercy neither of you had ever gone there." Rose answered by a low cough, which her mother did not hear, or at least did not notice. Jenny, who loved the country and the country people, was not much pleased with her mother's plan. But for once Mrs. Lincoln was determined, and after stealing one more sled-ride down the long hill, and bidding farewell to the old desk in the school-house, sacred for the name carved three years before with Billy Bender's jack-knife, Jenny went back with her mother to Boston, leaving Rose to droop and fade in the hot, unwholesome atmosphere of Miss Hinton's school-room. Not long after Jenny's return to the city, she wrote to Mary an amusing account of her mother's reason for removing her from Chicopee. "But on the whole, I am glad to be at home," said she, "for I see Billy Bender almost every day. I first met him coming down Washington Street, and he walked with me clear to our gate. Ida Selden had a party last week, and owing to George Moreland's influence, Billy was there. He was very attentive to me, though Henry says 'twas right the other way. But it wasn't. I didn't ask him to go out to supper with me. I only told him I'd introduce him to somebody who would go, and he immediately offered me his arm. Oh, how mother scolded, and how angry she got when she asked me if I wasn't ashamed, and I told her I wasn't! "Billy doesn't appear just as he used to. Seems as though something troubled him; and what is very strange, he never speaks of you, unless I do first. You've no idea how handsome he is. To be sure, he hasn't the air of George Moreland, and doesn't dress as elegantly, but I think he's finer looking. Ever so many girls at Ida's party asked who he was, and said 'twas a pity he wasn't rich, but that wouldn't make any difference with me,--I'd have him just as soon as though he was wealthy. "How mother would go on if she should see this! But I don't care,--I like Billy Bender, and I can't help it, and _entre nous_, I believe he likes me better than he did! But I must stop now, for Lizzie Upton has called for me to go with her and see a poor blind woman in one of the back alleys." From this extract it will be seen that Jenny, though seventeen years of age, was the same open-hearted,
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