Aunt Henshaw suggested that it would be better to let those grow up, and have others made in the right place; but I still retained a vivid recollection of that scene of torture, and did not therefore feel willing to have it repeated.  But the ear-rings must come out—­they were no ornament all one-sided; so they were laid away in cotton, while I had the pleasure of reflecting on the suffering I had endured for nothing.  Being thus brought down at the very commencement of my attempt to be sensible, and finding it less trouble to resume my natural character, I concluded to disregard Sylvia’s well-meant advice.  I was very poor at keeping a secret; so one by one all the scrapes in which I had figured came to light, to the great horror of the others, and the delight of Fred, who was quite pleased to discover a congenial soul.

Mammy at length seized upon me again, and carrying me almost by force to the nursery, she locked the door and sat down beside me; determined, as she said, to have me to herself for a while.  Having requested an account of all the adventures I had met with, she listened with the most absorbed attention while I unfolded the various circumstances of my visit.  Mammy was sometimes amused, sometimes frightened, and often shocked, but generally for the dignity of the family; for as I had been its representative, she feared that it would suffer in the eyes of the country people.

Time passed on; Aunt Henshaw returned home, and things proceeded in their usual way.  My vanity was flattered by the increased attention which I met with on all sides; my parents appeared to consider me much less of a child since my return, and I was in consequence almost emancipated from the nursery; while Mammy and Jane no longer chided me for my misdemeanors—­which, to say the truth, were much less frequent than formerly.

But I soon after experienced a great source of regret in the departure of Ellen Tracy for boarding-school.  Not being an only daughter like myself, her parents could better spare her; but we were almost inconsolable at parting, and having shed abundance of tears, presented each other with keepsakes as mementos of our unchanging friendship.  Hers was a little china cup, which I have kept to this day, while I gave her a ring made of my own hair; so that, for want of Ellen’s company, I was obliged to take up with her brother’s; and the boys complained that I kept Charles so much to myself it was impossible to make him join any of their excursions.

It was my twelfth birthday; and on the evening of that day I feared that Mammy’s oft-repeated threat of leaving us, at which we had so often trembled in our younger days, was about to be verified.  A married sister was taken very ill, and Mammy was immediately sent for to take care of her; and indeed we were afraid that she would be obliged to stay there altogether, on account of her nephews and nieces.  How dreary the nursery seemed after her departure!  In vain did the good-natured Jane exert herself to tell her most amusing stories; they had lost their interest; and yielding to her feelings, she became at length as dull as any of us.