I see. But there's the Betterson side to the family,--two great,
lubberly boys, according to your friend's account; a proud, domineering
set, I warrant ye! The idee of making a slave of yourself for them!
You'll find it a mighty uncomf'table place, mark my word!"

"I hope no more so than the place I am in now,--excuse me for saying it,
Aunt Presbit," added Vinnie, in a trembling voice. "It isn't your fault.
But you know how things are."

"O, la, yes! _she_ wants to go ahead, and order everything; and I think
it's as well to let her,--though she'll find she can't run over _me_!
But I don't blame you the least mite, Vinnie, for feeling sensitive; and
if you've made up your mind to go, I sha'n't hender ye,--I'll help ye
all I can."

So it happened that, only four days after the receipt of her sister's
letter, Vinnie, with all her worldly possessions contained in one not
very large trunk, bid her friends good by, and, not without misgivings,
set out alone on her long journey.

She took a packet-boat on the canal for Buffalo. At Buffalo, with the
assistance of friends she had made on board the boat, she found the
captain of a schooner, who agreed to give her a passage around the lakes
to Chicago, for four dollars. There were no railroads through Northern
Ohio and across Michigan and Indiana in those days; and although there
were steamboats on the lakes, Vinnie found that a passage on one of them
would cost more money than she could afford. So she was glad to go in
the schooner.

The weather was fine, the winds favored, and the Heron made a quick
trip. Vinnie, after two or three days of sea-sickness, enjoyed the
voyage, which was made all the more pleasant to her by the friendship of
the captain and his wife.

She was interested in all she saw,--in watching the waves, the sailors
hauling the ropes, the swelling of the great sails,--in the vessels they
met or passed, the ports at which they touched,--the fort, the Indians,
and the wonderfully clear depth of the water at Mackinaw. But the voyage
grew tiresome toward the close, and her heart bounded with joy when the
captain came into the cabin early one morning and announced that they
had reached Chicago.

The great Western metropolis was then a town of no more than eight or
ten thousand inhabitants, hastily and shabbily built on the low level of
the plain stretching for miles back from the lake shore. In a short walk
with the captain's wife, Vinnie saw about all of th