pected--what
my friends _could_ expect. Aunt Mercy was intimidated, and retired as
soon as she had paid her the last quarter's bills.

A week after my tournament with Charlotte Alden I went back to Surrey.
There was little preparation to make--few friends to bid farewell.
Ruth and Sally had emerged from their farm, and were sewing again at
grand'ther's. Sally bade me remember that riches took to themselves
wings and flew away; she _hoped_ they had not been a snare to my
mother; but she wasn't what she was, it was a fact.

"No, she isn't," Ruth affirmed. "Do you remember, Sally, when she came
out to the farm once, and rode the white colt bare-back round the big
meadow, with her hair flying?"

"Hold your tongue, Ruth."

Ruth looked penitent as she gave me a paper of hollyhock seeds, and
said the flowers were a beautiful blood-red, and that I must plant
them near the sink drain. Caroline had already gone home, so Aunt
Mercy had nothing cheery but her plants and her snuff; for she had
lately contracted the habit of snuff-taking but very privately.

"Train her well, Locke; she is skittish," said grand'ther as we got
into the chaise to go home.

"Grand'ther, if I am ever rich enough to own a peaked-roof pig-sty,
will you come and see me?"

"Away with you." And he went nimbly back to the house, chafing his
little hands.

CHAPTER XI.

I was going home! When we rode over the brow of the hill within a
mile of Surrey, and I saw the crescent-shaped village, and the tall
chimneys of our house on its outer edge, instead of my heart leaping
for joy, as I had expected, a sudden indifference filled it. I felt
averse to the change from the narrow ways of Barmouth, which, for the
moment, I regretted. When I entered the house, and saw mother in her
old place, her surroundings unaltered, I suffered a disappointment.
I had not had the power of transferring the atmosphere of my year's
misery to Surrey.

The family gathered round me. I heard the wonted sound of the banging
of doors. "The doors at grand'ther's," I mused, "had list nailed
round their edges; but then he _had_ the list, being a tailor."

"I vum," said Temperance, with her hand on her hip, and not offering to
approach me, "your hair is as thick as a mop."

Hepsey, rubbing her fingers against her thumb, remarked that she
hoped learning had not taken away my appetite. "I have made an Indian
bannock for you, and we are going to have broiled sword-fish, besi