Mr. Lincoln turned away to hide a tear, for he had no hope that she would ever return.  Towards nightfall of the next day they reached Glenwood, and Rose, more fatigued than she was willing to acknowledge, now that she was so determined to get well, was lifted from the carriage and carried into the house.  Mrs. Howland hastened forward to receive her, and for once Rose forgot to notice whether the cut of her cap was of this year’s fashion or last.

“I am weary,” she said.  “Lay me where I can rest.”  And with the grandmother leading the way, the father carried his child to the chamber prepared for her with so much care.

“It’s worse than I thought ’twas,” said Mrs. Howland, returning to the parlor below, where her daughter, after looking in vain for the big rocking-chair, had thrown herself with a sigh upon the chintz-covered lounge.  “It’s a deal worse than I thought ’twas.  Hasn’t she catched cold, or been exposed some way?”

“Not in the least,” returned Mrs. Lincoln, twirling the golden stopper of her smelling bottle.  “The foundation of her sickness was laid at Mount Holyoke, and the whole faculty ought to be indicted for manslaughter.”

Jenny’s clear, truthful eyes turned towards her mother, who frowned darkly, and continued:  “She was as well as any one until she went there, and I consider it my duty to warn all parents against sending their daughters to a place where neither health, manners, nor any thing else is attended to, except religion and housework.”

Jenny had not quite got over her childish habit of occasionally setting her mother right on some points, and she could not forbear saying that Dr. Kleber thought Rose injured herself by attending Mrs. Russell’s party.

“Dr. Kleber doesn’t know any more about it than I do,” returned her mother.  “He’s always minding other folks’ business, and so are you.  I guess you’d better go up stairs, and see if Rose doesn’t want something.”

Jenny obeyed, and as she entered her sister’s chamber, Rose lifted her head languidly from her pillow, and pointing to a window, which had been opened that she might breathe more freely, said, “Just listen; don’t you hear that horrid croaking?”

Jenny laughed aloud, for she knew Rose had heard “that horrid croaking” move than a hundred times in Chicopee, but in Glenwood every thing must necessarily assume a goblin form and sound.  Seating herself upon the foot of the bed, she said, “Why, that’s the frogs.  I love to hear them dearly.  It makes me feel both sad and happy, just as the crickets do that sing under the hearth in our old home at Chicopee.”

Jenny’s whole heart was in the country, and she could not so well sympathize with her nervous, sensitive sister, who shrank from country sights and country sounds.  Accidentally spying some tall locust branches swinging in the evening breeze before the east window, she again spoke to Jenny, telling her to look and see if the tree leaned against the house, “for if it does,” said she, “and creaks I shan’t sleep a wink to-night.”