healthy mean;
either alone would perhaps have been more than I could then have
sustained. All that year my life was narrowed to that house, my
school, and the church. Father offered to take me to ride, when
he came to Barmouth, or carry me to Milford; but the motion of the
carriage, and the conveying power of the horse, created such a fearful
and realizing sense of escape, that I gave up riding with him. Aunt
Mercy seldom left home; my schoolmates did not invite me to visit
them; the seashore was too distant for me to ramble there; the
storehouses and wharves by the river-side offered no agreeable
saunterings; and the street, in Aunt Mercy's estimation, was not the
place for an idle promenade. My exercise, therefore, was confined
to the garden--a pleasant spot, now that midsummer had come, and
inhabited with winged and crawling creatures, with whom I claimed
companionship, especially with the red, furry caterpillars, that have,
alas, nearly passed away, and given place to a variegated, fantastic
tribe, which gentleman farmers are fond of writing about.

Mother rode over to Barmouth occasionally, but seemed more glad when
she went away than when she came. Veronica came with her once, but
said she would come no more while I was there. She too would wait till
the end of the year, for I spoiled the place. She said this so calmly
that I never thought of being offended by it. I told her the episode
of the pink calico. "It is a lovely color," she said, when I showed it
to her. "If you like, I will take it home and burn it."

As I developed the dramatic part of my story--the blow given Charlotte
Alden, Verry rubbed her face shrinkingly, as if she had felt the blow.
"Let me see your hand," she asked; "did I ever strike anybody?"

"You threw a pail of salt downstairs, once, upon my head, and put out
my sight."

"I wish, when you are home, you would pound Mr. Park; he talks too
much about the Resurrection. And," she added mysteriously, "he likes
mother."

"Likes mother!" I said aghast.

"He watches her so when she holds Arthur! Why do you stare at me? Why
do I talk to you? I am going. Now mind, I shall never leave home to go
to any school; I shall know enough without."

While Veronica was holding this placable talk with me, I discovered in
her the high-bred air, the absence of which I deplored in myself.

How cool and unimpressionable she looked! She did not attract me then.
My mind wandered to what I had heard Mary Benn