July 14.

“Aunt Esther, in all the stories of your early days that you have told us, you have not yet described your life in Pennsylvania,” said Ida one evening, when we were gathered about the piano.  “Do tell us about it.  You have once or twice merely alluded to living in the woods, and my curiosity is quite excited.  Were they veritable forests?  I do not remember hearing papa say much about them.”

Mamma smiled sadly.

“What makes you think of Pennsylvania to-night, my child?” she asked.

“I do not know, auntie,” was the reply, “unless perhaps it was hearing Cecilia sing ‘My love is like the red, red rose.’  You told me, I remember, that grandmamma used often to sing that pretty little Scotch ballad.”

“Yes, it was one of mother’s favorite songs,” said mamma.  “I can remember perfectly the way she used to sing it.  Not in your English version, Cecilia, but with Burns’ own Scotch words, and in her sweet, low voice, with a ring of passion that one rarely hears in a drawing-room at the present day.  As Charles Reade says of one of his heroines, ’She sung the music for the sake of the words, not the words for the sake of the music—­which is something very rare.’

“I am not surprised that you have never heard your papa say much of our life in Pennsylvania, for you remember that he did not accompany us there, but only made us occasional visits.  Before we left Vermont father had already apprenticed him, at his earnest desire, to the publishers of the North American Spectator, at Poultney, and brother Barnes (who is fifteen months his junior) then took his place in the household.  I think that your papa had been some time in the Spectator office before our departure for the woods, in September.”

“Yes,” said Marguerite, who always remembers dates; “he was apprenticed the April before you left, and came over to Westhaven to bid you all good-by.  I remember what he says of the parting in his ‘Recollections:’  [1]

“’It was a sad parting.  We had seen hard times together, and were very fondly attached to each other.  I was urged by some of my kindred to give up Poultney (where there were some things in the office not exactly to my mind), and accompany them to their new home, whence, they urged, I could easily find in its vicinity another and better chance to learn my chosen trade.  I was strongly tempted to comply, but it would have been bad faith to do so; and I turned my face once more towards Poultney, with dry eyes but a heavy heart.  A word from my mother, at the critical moment, might have overcome my resolution.  But she did not speak it, and I went my way, leaving the family soon to travel much farther and in an opposite direction.  After the parting was over, and I well on my way, I was strongly tempted to return; and my walk back to Poultney (twelve miles) was one of the slowest and saddest of my life.’

“Do commence at the beginning, mamma,” Marguerite continued, “and tell us all about the journey to Pennsylvania, and how your new home looked when you arrived.  How large was the family then?  Aunt Margaret was born in Vermont, was she not?”