CHAPTER X.

I was quite surprised at the effect which this remark produced.  Although an only daughter, I had never been much caressed at home—­I was always so troublesome that they loved me best at a distance.  If I happened to get into the library with my father, I was sure to upset the inkstand, or shake the table where he sat writing—­or if admitted to my mother’s apartment, I made sad havoc with her work-basket, and was very apt to clip up cut out articles with my little scissors—­which said scissors I regarded with the greatest affection; in the first place because they were my own private property, and in the next place, they afforded me the delightful pleasure of clipping—­that great enjoyment of childhood; but they did so much mischief that complaints against them were loud and long, and I quite trembled at an oft-repeated threat of taking them away.

My mother evidently disapproved of Aunt Henshaw’s proposal, and my father drawing me towards him affectionately, said:  “I am afraid we could not part with our little madcap—­we should miss her noise sadly.”

The idea of being missed, and actually made a subject of argument, was something quite new to me; and glancing in surprise from one to the other, I awaited the issue in silence, scarcely knowing whether I wished to go or stay.  But Aunt Henshaw carried her point.  She represented so many advantages to be gained by the change, where I could run about quite wild, rolling among the fresh hay, and breathing the pure air—­insisting that it must bring a color into my pale cheeks—­that my parents at length yielded.

Now began the delightful bustle of preparation.  My mother turned over my scanty wardrobe with perplexed looks; and an immediate cutting and clipping took place, by which old gowns of hers were made into bran new ones for me.  Nor was this all—­some were bought on purpose for me; and I had two or three delightful jaunts to the city, to choose the patterns for myself; and I wondered if anybody ever had so many, new things at once as I was about to have.  I became quite a wonder in the family—­a person whose movements were of the utmost importance; for I was going to be away from them the whole summer, and it seemed an almost endless separation.  Mammy was not at all pleased at their sending her child away from her; the old nurse even cried over me, and insisted upon it that I had always been a paragon of excellence, and that she could not live without me.  My father gave me some money to buy her a present, the selection of which was to be left entirely to my own taste; and the sum I expended in a manner perfectly characteristic:  I procured a large bunch of gay beads for Mammy, and presented Jane with the wonderful history of little Red Riding Hood.  Both treasured them as carefully, and apparently valued them as highly, as if they had been better selected; and being quite confident that they would prefer them to anything else, I was much surprised at the disapprobation expressed in the family circle.