At a glance she had taken in the whole—­had comprehended that there was no affinity whatever between herself and the objects around her, and a wild, intense longing filled her heart to be once more among her native hills.  She had witnessed the merriment of the blacks, the scornful curl of Carrie’s lip, the half-suppressed ridicule of Anna, when they met her grandmother, and now uncertain of her own reception, she stood before her cousins not knowing whether to advance or run away.  For a moment there was an awkward silence, and then John Jr., bent on mischief, whispered to Carrie, “Look at that pinch in her bonnet, and just see her shoes!  Big as little sailboats!”

This was too much for Lena.  She already disliked John Jr., and now, flying into a violent passion, she drew off her shoes, and hurling them at the young gentleman’s head fled away, away, she knew not, cared not whither, so that she got out of sight and hearing.  Coming at last to the arbor bridge across the brook in the garden, she paused for breath, and throwing herself upon a seat, burst into a flood of tears.  For several minutes she sobbed so loudly that she did not hear the sound of footsteps upon the graveled walk.  Anna had followed her, partly out of curiosity, and partly out of pity, the latter of which preponderated when she saw how bitterly her cousin was weeping.  Going up to her she said, “Don t cry so, ’Lena.  Look up and talk.  It’s Anna, your cousin.”

’Lena had not yet recovered from her angry fit, and thinking Anna only came to tease her, and perhaps again ridicule her bonnet, she tore the article, from her head, and bending it up double, threw it into the stream, which carried it down to the fish-pond, where for two or three hours it furnished amusement for some little negroes, who, calling it a crab, fished for it with hook and line!  For a moment Anna stood watching the bonnet as it sailed along down the stream, thinking it looked better there than on its owner’s head, but wondering why ’Lena had thrown it away.  Then again addressing her cousin, she asked why she had done so?

“It’s a homely old thing, and I hate it,” answered ’Lena, again bursting into tears.  “I hate everybody, and I wish I was dead, or back in Massachusetts, I don’t care which!”

With her impressions of the “Bay State,” where her mother said folks lived on “cold beans and codfish,” Anna thought she should prefer the first alternative, but she did not say so; and after a little she tried again to comfort ’Lena, telling her “she liked her, or at least she was going to like her a heap.”

“No, you ain’t,” returned ’Lena.  “You laughed at me and granny both.  I saw you do it, and you think I don’t know anything, but I do.  I’ve been through Olney’s geography, and Colburn’s arithmetic twice!”

This was more than Anna could say.  She had no scholarship of which to boast; but she had a heart brimful of love, and in reply to ’Lena’s accusation of having laughed at her, she replied, “I know I laughed, for grandma looked so funny I couldn’t help it.  But I won’t any more.  I pity you because your mother is dead, and you never had any father, ma says.”