“No, she isn’t,” Ruth affirmed.  “Do you remember, Sally, when she came out to the farm once, and rode the white colt bare-back round the big meadow, with her hair flying?”

“Hold your tongue, Ruth.”

Ruth looked penitent as she gave me a paper of hollyhock seeds, and said the flowers were a beautiful blood-red, and that I must plant them near the sink drain.  Caroline had already gone home, so Aunt Mercy had nothing cheery but her plants and her snuff; for she had lately contracted the habit of snuff-taking but very privately.

“Train her well, Locke; she is skittish,” said grand’ther as we got into the chaise to go home.

“Grand’ther, if I am ever rich enough to own a peaked-roof pig-sty, will you come and see me?”

“Away with you.”  And he went nimbly back to the house, chafing his little hands.

CHAPTER XI.

I was going home!  When we rode over the brow of the hill within a mile of Surrey, and I saw the crescent-shaped village, and the tall chimneys of our house on its outer edge, instead of my heart leaping for joy, as I had expected, a sudden indifference filled it.  I felt averse to the change from the narrow ways of Barmouth, which, for the moment, I regretted.  When I entered the house, and saw mother in her old place, her surroundings unaltered, I suffered a disappointment.  I had not had the power of transferring the atmosphere of my year’s misery to Surrey.

The family gathered round me.  I heard the wonted sound of the banging of doors.  “The doors at grand’ther’s,” I mused, “had list nailed round their edges; but then he had the list, being a tailor.”

“I vum,” said Temperance, with her hand on her hip, and not offering to approach me, “your hair is as thick as a mop.”

Hepsey, rubbing her fingers against her thumb, remarked that she hoped learning had not taken away my appetite.  “I have made an Indian bannock for you, and we are going to have broiled sword-fish, besides, for supper.  Is it best to cook more, Mrs. Morgeson, now that Cassandra has come?”

The boy, by name Charles, came to see the new arrival, but smitten with diffidence crept under the table, and examined me from his retreat.

“Don’t you wish to see Arthur?” inquired mother; “he is getting his double teeth.”

“Oh yes, and where’s Veronica?”

“She’s up garret writing geography, and told me nothing in the world must disturb her, till she had finished an account of the city of Palmiry,” said Temperance.

“Call her when supper is ready,” replied mother, who asked me to come into the bedroom where Arthur was sleeping.  He was a handsome child, large and fair, and as I lifted his white, lax fingers, a torrent of love swept through me, and I kissed him.

“I am afraid I make an idol of him, Cassy.”

“Are you unhappy because you love him so well, mother, and feel that you must make expiation?”