_, and Lyell's
_Elements of Geology_, Bancroft's _History of the United States_, and
_Watts on the Mind_, and began French and Latin. It was such a busy,
happy year that I was actually sorry when vacation began.

I was sorrier yet when a letter was received from Miss Bradnor, saying
that she "had been betrothed for ten years to an exemplary gentleman who
now claimed the fulfilment of her pledge. Before the letter could reach
us she would (D. V.) have become Mrs. Calvin Chapin. She hoped the
unforeseen reversal of her plans for the ensuing year would not occasion
serious inconvenience to her dear and respected friends, Mr. and Mrs.
Burwell."

"It takes the prim sort to give us such surprises!" exclaimed my mother.

"It takes all sorts and conditions of women, _I_ think!" rejoined my
father, dryly. "I foresee that the Richmond plan will have to be carried
out, after all. Governesses are kittle cattle, at the best. And we have
had three of the very best."

As may be supposed, I was consumed by curiosity to know what "the
Richmond plan" could be. The city I had never yet seen had been made
tenfold more interesting to me within a year by the removal of the Frank
Mortons to that place. Cousin Frank had gone into the Commission
business there with an uncle who had no son to succeed him in the firm.
But, although I pricked up my ears smartly at my father's unguarded
remark, I had to smother my excitement as best I could, and study
patience--surely the hardest lesson ever set for the young. When older
people were talking with one another, it was esteemed an impertinence in
children to interrupt them by questions.

"If it were best for you to understand what we were saying, we would
take pains to explain it to you," my mother would say when we broke this
one of her rules. And, still oftener, "Little girls should trust their
fathers and mothers to tell them at the right time all that they ought
to know."

The right time in this instance was one moonlight September night, soon
after Mary 'Liza and I had gone to bed. My mother had a habit of coming
up to our room, and sitting down by the bed in the dark, or without
other light than the moon, to have a little talk with us. "To give us a
good appetite for our dreams," she would say in her merry way. We dearly
enjoyed these visits, especially on Sunday nights, when we told her what
we had been reading and thinking that day, and repeated the hymns we
loved best.

This was on Mo