Aunt Merce and mother exchanged glances.

“Say, mother, what shall I do?” I asked again.

“Do,” she answered in a mechanical voice; “read the Bible, and sew more.”

“Veronica’s life is not misspent,” she continued, and seeming to forget that Verry was still there.  “Why should she find work for her hands when neither you nor I do?”

Veronica slipped out of the room; and I sat on the floor beside mother.  I loved her in an unsatisfactory way.  What could we be to each other?  We kissed tenderly; I saw she was saddened by something regarding me, which she could not explain, because she refused to explain me naturally.  I thought she wished me to believe she could have no infirmity in common with me—­no temptations, no errors—­that she must repress all the doubts and longings of her heart for example’s sake.

There was a weight upon me all that day, a dreary sense of imperfection.

When father came home he asked me if I would like to go to Rosville.  I answered, “Yes.”  Mother must travel with me, for he could not leave home.  The sooner I went the better.  He also thought Veronica should go.  She was called and consulted, and, provided Temperance would accompany us to take care of her, she consented.  It was all arranged that evening.  Temperance said we must wait a week at least, for her corns to be cured, and the plum-colored silk made, which had been shut up in a band-box for three years.

We started on our journey one bright morning in June, to go to Boston in a stagecoach, a hundred miles from Surrey, and thence to Rosville, forty miles further, by railroad.  We stopped a night on the way to Boston at a country inn, which stood before an egg-shaped pond.  Temperance remade our beds, declaiming the while against the unwholesome situation of the house; the idea of anybody’s living in the vicinity of fresh water astonished her; to impose upon travelers’ health that way was too much.  She went to the kitchen to learn whether the landlady cooked, or hired a cook.  She sat up all night with our luggage in sight, to keep off what she called “prowlers”—­she did not like to say robbers, for fear of exciting our imaginations—­and frightened us by falling out of her chair toward morning.  Veronica insisted upon her going to bed, but she refused, till Veronica threatened to sit up herself, when she carried her own carpet-bag to bed with her.

We arrived in Boston the next day and went to the Bromfield House in Bromfield Street, whither father had directed us.  We were ushered to the parlor by a waiter, who seemed struck by Temperance, and who was treated by her with respect.  “Mr. Shepherd, the landlord, himself, I guess,” she whispered.

Three cadaverous children were there eating bread and butter from a black tray on the center-table.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Temperance, “what bread those children are eating!  It is made of sawdust.”

“It’s good, you old cat,” screamed the little girl.