Mary felt perplexed and troubled.  Billy’s letters of late had been more like those of a lover than a brother, and she could not help guessing the nature of “the plan formed in boyhood.”  She knew she should never love him except with a sister’s love, and though she could not tell him so, her next letter lacked the tone of affection with which she was accustomed to write, and on the whole a rather formal affair.  Billy, who readily perceived the change, attributed it to the right cause, and from that time his letters became far less cheerful than usual.

Mary usually cried over them, wishing more than once that Billy would transfer his affection from herself to Jenny, and it was for this reason, perhaps, that without stopping to consider the propriety of the matter, she first asked Jenny to write to him, and then encouraged her in answering his notes, which (as her own letters grew shorter) became gradually longer and longer, until at last his letters were addressed to Jenny, while the notes they contained were directed to Mary!

CHAPTER XX.

THE CLOSING OF THE YEAR.

Rapidly the days passed on at Mount Holyoke.  Autumn faded into winter, whose icy breath floated for a time over the mountain tops, and then melted away at the approach of spring, which, with its swelling buds and early flowers, gave way in its turn to the long bright days of summer.  And now only a few weeks remained ere the annual examination at which Ida was to be graduated.  Neither Rose nor Jenny were to return the next year, and nothing but Mr. Lincoln’s firmness and good sense had prevented their being sent for when their mother first heard that they had failed to enter the Middle class.

Mrs. Lincoln’s mortification was undoubtedly greatly increased from the fact that the despised Mary had entered in advance of her daughters.  “Things are coming to a pretty pass,” said she.  “Yes, a pretty pass; but I might have known better than to send my children to such a school.”

Mr. Lincoln could not forbear asking her in a laughing way, “if the schools which she attended were of a higher order than Mount Holyoke.”

Bursting into tears, Mrs. Lincoln replied that “she didn’t think she ought to be twitted of her poverty.”

“Neither do I,” returned her husband.  “You were no more to blame for working in the factory, than Mary is for having been a pauper!”

Mrs. Lincoln was silent, for she did not particularly care to hear about her early days, when she had been an operative in the cotton mills of Southbridge.  She had possessed just enough beauty to captivate the son of the proprietor, who was fresh from college, and after a few weeks’ acquaintance they were married.  Fortunately her husband was a man of good sense, and restrained her from the commission of many foolish acts.  Thus when she insisted upon sending for Rose and Jenny, he promptly replied that they should not come home!  Still, as Rose seemed discontented, complaining that so much exercise made her side and shoulder ache, and as Jenny did not wish to remain another year unless Mary did, he consented that they should leave school at the close of the term, on condition that they went somewhere else.