I have lamented over myself lately."

"How is Ben?"

"He has been here often. How strange it was that to him alone Veronica
gave her hand when they met! Indeed, she gave him both her hands."

"And he?"

"Took them, bowing over them, till I thought he wasn't coming up
again. I do not call people eccentric any more," she said, faintly
blushing. "I look for a reason in every action. Tell me fairly, have
you had a contempt for me--for my want of perception? I understand you
now, to the bone and marrow, I assure you."

"Then you understand more than I do. But you will remember that once
or twice I attempted to express my doubts to you?"

"Yes, yes, with a candor which misled me. But you are talking too
much."

"Give me more broth, then."

CHAPTER XXII.

I was soon well enough to go home. Father came for me, bringing Aunt
Merce. There was no alteration in her, except that she had taken to
wearing a false front, which had a claret tinge when the light struck
it, and a black lace cap. She walked the room in speechless distress
when she saw me, and could not refrain from taking an immense pinch of
snuff in my presence.

"Didn't you bring any flag-root, Aunt Merce?"

"Oh Lord, Cassandra, won't anything upon earth change you?"

And then we both laughed, and felt comfortable together. Her knitting
mania had given way to one she called transferring. She brought a
little basket filled with rags, worn-out embroideries, collars, cuffs,
and edges of handkerchiefs, from which she cut the needle-work, to sew
again on new muslin. She looked at embroidery with an eye merely to
its capacity for being transferred. Alice proved a treasure to her,
by giving her heaps of fine work. She and Aunt Merce were pleased with
each other, and when we were ready to come away, Alice begged her to
visit her every year. I made no farewell visits--my ill health was
sufficient excuse; but my schoolmates came to bid me good-bye, and
brought presents of needlebooks, and pincushions, which I returned by
giving away yards of ribbon, silver fruit-knives, and Mrs. Hemans's
poems, which poetess had lately given my imagination an apostrophizing
direction. Miss Prior came also, with a copy of "Young's Night
Thoughts," bound in speckled leather This hilarious and refreshing
poem remained at the bottom of my trunk, till Temperance fished it
out, to read on Sundays, in her own room, where she usually passed her
hours of solitude in hemming dis