The atmosphere of my two lives was so different, that when I passed into one, the other ceased to affect me.  I forgot all that I suffered and hated at Miss Black’s, as soon as I crossed the threshold, and entered grand’ther’s house.  The difference kept up a healthy mean; either alone would perhaps have been more than I could then have sustained.  All that year my life was narrowed to that house, my school, and the church.  Father offered to take me to ride, when he came to Barmouth, or carry me to Milford; but the motion of the carriage, and the conveying power of the horse, created such a fearful and realizing sense of escape, that I gave up riding with him.  Aunt Mercy seldom left home; my schoolmates did not invite me to visit them; the seashore was too distant for me to ramble there; the storehouses and wharves by the river-side offered no agreeable saunterings; and the street, in Aunt Mercy’s estimation, was not the place for an idle promenade.  My exercise, therefore, was confined to the garden—­a pleasant spot, now that midsummer had come, and inhabited with winged and crawling creatures, with whom I claimed companionship, especially with the red, furry caterpillars, that have, alas, nearly passed away, and given place to a variegated, fantastic tribe, which gentleman farmers are fond of writing about.

Mother rode over to Barmouth occasionally, but seemed more glad when she went away than when she came.  Veronica came with her once, but said she would come no more while I was there.  She too would wait till the end of the year, for I spoiled the place.  She said this so calmly that I never thought of being offended by it.  I told her the episode of the pink calico.  “It is a lovely color,” she said, when I showed it to her.  “If you like, I will take it home and burn it.”

As I developed the dramatic part of my story—­the blow given Charlotte Alden, Verry rubbed her face shrinkingly, as if she had felt the blow.  “Let me see your hand,” she asked; “did I ever strike anybody?”

“You threw a pail of salt downstairs, once, upon my head, and put out my sight.”

“I wish, when you are home, you would pound Mr. Park; he talks too much about the Resurrection.  And,” she added mysteriously, “he likes mother.”

“Likes mother!” I said aghast.

“He watches her so when she holds Arthur!  Why do you stare at me?  Why do I talk to you?  I am going.  Now mind, I shall never leave home to go to any school; I shall know enough without.”

While Veronica was holding this placable talk with me, I discovered in her the high-bred air, the absence of which I deplored in myself.

How cool and unimpressionable she looked!  She did not attract me then.  My mind wandered to what I had heard Mary Bennett say, in recess one day, that her brother had seen me in church, and came home with the opinion that I was the handsomest girl in Miss Black’s school.

“Is it possible!” replied the girl to whom she had made the remark.  “I never should think of calling her pretty.”