I did not go back to Mrs. Desire’s school.  Mother said that I must be useful at home.  She sent me to Temperance, and Temperance sent me to play, or told me to go “a visitin’.”  I did not care to visit, for in consequence of being turned out of school, which was considered an indelible disgrace and long remembered, my schoolmates regarded me in the light of a Pariah, and put on insufferably superior airs when they saw me.  So, like Veronica, I amused myself, and passed days on the sea-shore, or in the fields and woods, mother keeping me in long enough to make a square of patchwork each day and to hear her read a Psalm—­a duty which I bore with patience, by guessing when the “Selahs” would come in, and counting them.  But wherever I was, or whatever I did, no feeling of beauty ever stole into my mind.  I never turned my face up to the sky to watch the passing of a cloud, or mused before the undulating space of sea, or looked down upon the earth with the curiosity of thought, or spiritual aspiration.  I was moved and governed by my sensations, which continually changed, and passed away—­to come again, and deposit vague ideas which ignorantly haunted me.  The literal images of all things which I saw were impressed on my shapeless mind, to be reproduced afterward by faculties then latent.  But what satisfaction was that?  Doubtless the ideal faculty was active in Veronica from the beginning; in me it was developed by the experience of years.  No remembrance of any ideal condition comes with the remembrance of my childish days, and I conclude that my mind, if I had any, existed in so rudimental a state that it had little influence upon my character.

CHAPTER IV.

One afternoon in the following July, tired of walking in the mown fields, and of carrying a nest of mice, which I had discovered under a hay-rick, I concluded I would begin a system of education with them; so arranging them on a grape-leaf, I started homeward.  Going in by the kitchen, I saw Temperance wiping the dust from the best china, which elated me, for it was a sign that we were going to have company to tea.

“You evil child,” she said, “where have you been?  Your mother has wanted you these hours, to dress you in your red French calico with wings to it.  Some of the members are coming to tea; Miss Seneth Jellatt, and she that was Clarissa Tripp, Snow now, and Miss Sophrony G. Dexter, and more besides.”

I put my mice in a basket, and begged Temperance to allow me to finish wiping the china; she consented, adjuring me not to let it fall.  “Mis Morgeson would die if any of it should be broken.”  I adored it, too.  Each piece had a peach, or pear, or a bunch of cherries painted on it, in lustrous brown.  The handles were like gold cords, and the covers had knobs of gilt grapes.

“What preserves are you going to put on the table?” I asked.

“Them West Ingy things Capen Curtis’s son brought home, and quartered quince, though I expect Mis Dexter will remark that the surup is ropy.”