Could she have listened to their remarks, as on a piece of wide road their carriages kept side by side for a mile or more, she would probably have felt amply repaid for her flowers and trouble too.

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Campbell, “I never could live in such a lonely out of the way place.”

“Nor I either,” returned Mrs. Lincoln, “but I think Mrs. Mason appears more at home here than in the city.  I suppose you know she was a poor girl when Mr. Mason married her, and such people almost always show their breeding.  Still she is a good sort of a woman, and it is well enough to have some such nice place to visit and get fruit.  Weren’t those delicious berries, and ain’t these splendid rosebuds?”

“I guess, though,” said Jenny, glancing at her mother’s huge bouquet, “Mrs. Mason didn’t expect you to gather quite so many.  And Rose, too, trampled down a beautiful lily without ever apologizing.”

“And what if I did?” retorted Rose.  “She and that girl have nothing to do but fix it up.”

This allusion to Mary, reminded Mrs. Campbell of her conversation with Mrs. Mason, and laughingly she repeated it.  “I never knew before,” said she, “that Mrs. Mason had so much spirit.  Why, she really seemed quite angry, and tried hard to make Mary out beautiful, and graceful, and all that.”

“And,” chimed in Ella, who was angry at Mrs. Mason for defending her sister, and angry at her sister for being defended, “don’t you think she said that Mary ought to be ashamed of me.”

“Is it possible she was so impudent!” said Mrs. Lincoln; “I wish I had been present, I would have spoken my mind freely, but so much one gets for patronizing such creatures.”

Here the road became narrow, and as the western sky showed indications of a storm, the coachmen were told to drive home as soon as possible.

Mrs. Campbell’s advice with regard to Mary, made no difference whatever with Mrs. Mason’s plans.  She had always intended doing for her whatever she could, and knowing that a good education was of far more value than money, she determined to give her every advantage which lay in her power.  There was that summer a most excellent school in Rice Corner, and as Mrs. Mason had fortunately no prejudices against a district school, where so many of our best and greatest men have been educated, she resolved to send her little protege, as soon as her wardrobe should be in a suitable condition.  Accordingly in a few days Mary became a regular attendant at the old brown school-house, where for a time we will leave her, and passing silently over a period of several years, again in another chapter open the scene in the metropolis of the “Old Bay State.”

CHAPTER XV.

THE THREE YOUNG MEN