Aunt Mercy took upon herself many of mother’s irksome cares; such as remembering where the patches and old linen were—­the hammer and nails; watching the sweetmeat pots; keeping the run of the napkins and blankets; packing the winter clothing, and having an eye on mice and ants, moth and mold.  Occasionally she read a novel; but was faithful to all the week-day meetings, making the acquaintance thereby of mother’s tea-drinking friends, who considered her an accomplished person, because she worked lace so beautifully, and had such a faculty for raising plants!  Mother left the house in her charge, and made several journeys with father this year.  This period was perhaps her happiest.  The only annoyance, visible to me, that I can remember, was one between her and father on the subject of charity.  He was for giving to all needy persons, while she only desired to bestow it on the deserving, but they had renounced the wish of manufacturing each other’s habits and opinions.  Whether mother ever desired the expression of that exaltation of feeling which only lasts in a man while he is in love, I cannot say.  It was not for me to know her heart.  It is not ordained that these beautiful secrets of feeling should be revealed, where they might prove to be the sweetest knowledge we could have.

Though the days flew by, days filled with the busy nothings of prosperity, they bore no meaning.  I shifted the hours, as one shifts the kaleidoscope, with an eye only to their movement.  Neither the remembrance of yesterday nor the hope of to-morrow stimulated me.  The mere fact of breathing had ceased to be a happiness, since the day I entered Miss Black’s school.  But I was not yet thoughtful.  As for my position, I was loved and I was hated, and it pleased me as much to be hated as to be loved.  My acquaintances were kind enough to let me know that I was generally thought proud, exacting, ill-natured, and apt to expect the best of everything.  But one thing I know of myself then—­that I concealed nothing; the desires and emotions which are usually kept as a private fund I displayed and exhausted.  My audacity shocked those who possessed this fund.  My candor was called anything but truthfulness; they named it sarcasm, cunning, coarseness, or tact, as those were constituted who came in contact with me.  Insight into character, frankness, generosity, disinterestedness, were sometimes given me.  Veronica alone was uncompromising; she put aside by instinct what baffled or attracted others, and, setting my real value upon me, acted accordingly.  I do not accuse her of injustice, but of a fierce harshness which kept us apart for long years.  As for her, she was the most reticent girl I ever knew, and but for her explosive temper, which betrayed her, she would have been a mystery.  The difference in our physical constitutions would have separated us, if there had been no other cause.  The weeks that she was confined to her room, preyed upon by some inscrutable disease, were weeks of darkness