ntinued more calmly: "We will decide soon."

It was decided that I should go, without my being consulted in the
matter. I felt resentful against mother, and could not understand
till afterward, why she had consented to the plan. It was because she
wished me to comprehend the influences of her early life, and learn
some of the lessons she had been taught. At first, father "poohed"
at the plan, but finally said it was a good place to tame me. When
Veronica heard that I was going, she told me that I would be stifled,
if I lived at Grandfather Warren's; but added that the plums in his
garden were good, and advised me to sit on the yellow stone doorstep,
under which the toads lived. She also informed me that she was glad of
it, and hoped I would stay forever.

To Barmouth I went, and in May entered Miss Black's genteel school.
Miss Black had a conviction that her vocation was teaching. Necessity
did not compel it, for she was connected with one of the richest
families in Barmouth. At the end of the week my curiosity regarding my
new position was quenched, and I dropped into the depths of my first
wretchedness. I frantically demanded of father, who had stopped to
see me on his way to Milford, to be taken home. He firmly resisted me.
Once a month, I should go home and spend a Sunday, if I chose, and he
would come to Barmouth every week.

My agitation and despair clouded his face for a moment, then it
cleared, and pinching my chin, he said, "Why don't you look like your
mother?"

"But she _is_ like her mother," said Aunt Merce.

"Well, Cassy, good-by"; and he gave me a kiss with cruel nonchalance.
I knew my year must be stayed out.

CHAPTER VII.

My life at Grandfather Warren's was one kind of penance and my life
in Miss Black's school another. Both differed from our home-life.
My filaments found no nourishment, creeping between the two; but
the fibers of youth are strong, and they do not perish. Grandfather
Warren's house reminded me of the casket which imprisoned the Genii.
I had let loose a Presence I had no power over--the embodiment of its
gloom, its sternness, and its silence.

With feeling comes observation; after that, one reasons. I began to
observe. Aunt Mercy was not the Aunt Merce I had known at home. She
wore a mask before her father. There was constraint between them;
each repressed the other. The result of this relation was a formal,
petrifying, unyielding system,--a system which, from the f