“Yes ’em,” I replied; but it was the first time that I had heard of Geology.  The compendium she gave me must have been dull and dry.  I could not get its lessons perfectly.  It never inspired me with any interest for land or sea.  I could not associate any of its terms, or descriptions, with the great rock under grand’ther’s house.  It was not for Miss Black to open the nodules of my understanding, with her hammer of instruction.  She proposed Botany also.  The young ladies made botanical excursions to the fields and woods outside Barmouth; I might as well join the class at once.  It was now in the family of the Legumes.  I accompanied the class on one excursion.  Not a soul appeared to know that I was present, and I declined going again.  Composition I must write once a month.  A few more details closed the interview.  I mentioned in it that father desired me to study arithmetic.  Miss Black placed me in a class; but her interests were in the higher and more elegant branches of education.  I made no more advance in the humble walks of learning than in those adorned by the dissection of flowers, the disruption of rocks, or the graces of composition.  Though I entered upon my duties under protest, I soon became accustomed to their routine, and the rest of my life seemed more like a dream of the future than a realization of the present.  I refused to go home at the end of the month.  I preferred waiting, I said, to the end of the year.  I was not urged to change my mind; neither was I applauded for my resolution.  The day that I could have gone home, I asked father to drive me to Milford, on the opposite side of the river which ran by Barmouth.  I shut my eyes tight, when the horse struck the boards of the long wooden bridge between the towns, and opened them when we stopped at an inn by the water side of Milford.  Father took me into a parlor, where sat a handsome, fat woman, hemming towels.

“Is that you, Morgeson?” she said.  “Is this your daughter?”

“Yes; can I leave her with you, while I go to the bank?  She has not been here before.”

“Lord ha’ mercy on us; you clip her wings, don’t you?  Come here, child, and let me pull off your pelisse.”

I went to her with a haughty air; it did not please me to hear my father called “Morgeson,” by a person unknown to me.  She understood my expression, and looked up at father; they both smiled, and I was vexed with him for his unwarrantable familiarity.  Pinching my cheek with her fat fingers, which were covered with red and green rings, she said, “We shall do very well together.  What a pretty silk pelisse, and silver buckles, too.”

After father went out, and my bonnet was disposed of, Mrs. Tabor gave me a huge piece of delicious sponge-cake, which softened me somewhat.

“What is your name, dear?”

“Morgeson.”

“It is easy to see that.”

“Well, Cassandra.”

“Oh, what a lovely name,” and she drew from her workbasket a paper-covered book; “there is no name in this novel half so pretty; I wish the heroine’s name had been Cassandra instead of Aldebrante.”