do not
remember hearing papa say much about them."

Mamma smiled sadly.

"What makes you think of Pennsylvania to-night, my child?" she asked.

"I do not know, auntie," was the reply, "unless perhaps it was hearing
Cecilia sing 'My love is like the red, red rose.' You told me, I
remember, that grandmamma used often to sing that pretty little Scotch
ballad."

"Yes, it was one of mother's favorite songs," said mamma. "I can
remember perfectly the way she used to sing it. Not in your English
version, Cecilia, but with Burns' own Scotch words, and in her sweet,
low voice, with a ring of passion that one rarely hears in a
drawing-room at the present day. As Charles Reade says of one of his
heroines, 'She sung the music for the sake of the words, not the words
for the sake of the music--which is something very rare.'

"I am not surprised that you have never heard your papa say much of our
life in Pennsylvania, for you remember that he did not accompany us
there, but only made us occasional visits. Before we left Vermont
father had already apprenticed him, at his earnest desire, to the
publishers of the _North American Spectator_, at Poultney, and brother
Barnes (who is fifteen months his junior) then took his place in the
household. I think that your papa had been some time in the
_Spectator_ office before our departure for the woods, in September."

"Yes," said Marguerite, who always remembers dates; "he was apprenticed
the April before you left, and came over to Westhaven to bid you all
good-by. I remember what he says of the parting in his
'Recollections:' [1]

"'It was a sad parting. We had seen hard times together, and were very
fondly attached to each other. I was urged by some of my kindred to
give up Poultney (where there were some things in the office not
exactly to my mind), and accompany them to their new home, whence, they
urged, I could easily find in its vicinity another and better chance to
learn my chosen trade. I was strongly tempted to comply, but it would
have been bad faith to do so; and I turned my face once more towards
Poultney, with dry eyes but a heavy heart. A word from my mother, at
the critical moment, might have overcome my resolution. But she did
not speak it, and I went my way, leaving the family soon to travel much
farther and in an opposite direction. After the parting was over, and
I well on my way, I was strongly tempted to return; and my walk back to
Poultney (twelve