“Locke decides for Cassy,” she answered; “I never do now,” looking at me reproachfully.

Cousin Charles’s hawk eyes caught the look, and he heard me too, when I tapped her shoulder till she turned round and smiled.  I whispered, “Mother, your eyes are as blue as the sea yonder, and I love you.”  She glanced toward it; it was murmuring softly, creeping along the shore, licking the rocks and sand as if recognizing a master.  And I saw and felt its steady, resistless heaving, insidious and terrible.

“Well,” said father, “we will talk of it on the way to Milford.”

“I have kinder of a creeping about your Cousin Charles, as you call him,” said Temperance, after she had closed the porch door.  “He is too much shut up for me.  How’s Mis Cousin Charles, I wonder?”

“He is fond of flowers,” remarked Aunt Merce; “he examined all my plants, and knew all their botanical names.”

“That’s a balm for every wound with you, isn’t it?” Temperance said.  “I spose I can clean the parlor, unless Mis Carver and Chandler are sitting in a row there?”

Veronica, who had hovered between the parlor and the hall while Cousin Charles was taking his leave, so that she might avoid the necessity of any direct notice of him, had heard his proposition about Rosville, said, “Cassandra will go there.”

“Do you feel it in your bones, Verry?” Temperance asked.

“Cassandra does.”

“Do I?  I believe I do.”

“You are eighteen; you are too old to go to school.”

“But I am not too old to have an agreeable time; besides, I am not eighteen, and shall not be till four days from now.”

“You think too much of having a good time, Cassandra,” said mother.  “I foresee the day when the pitcher will come back from the well broken.  You are idle and frivolous; eternally chasing after amusement.”

“God knows I don’t find it.”

“I know you are not happy.”

“Tell me,” I cried, striking the table with my hand, making Veronica wink, “tell me how to feel and act.”

“I have no influence with you, nor with Veronica.”

“Because,” said Verry, “we are all so different; but I like you, mother, and all that you do.”

“Different!” she exclaimed, “children talk to parents about a difference between them.”

“I never thought about it before.”  I said, “but where is the family likeness?”

Aunt Merce laughed.

“There’s the Morgesons,” I continued, “I hate ’em all.”

“All?” she echoed; “you are like this new one.”

“And Grand’ther Warren”—­I continued.

“Your talk,” interrupted Aunt Merce, jumping up and walking about, “is enough to make him rise out of his grave.”

“I believe,” said Veronica, “that Grand’ther Warren nearly crushed you and mother, when girls of our age.  Did you know that you had any wants then? or dare to dream anything beside that he laid down for you?”