Vinedresser's nurture and care."
I repeated the lines which I had heard them sing in the church.
"That's about the way it is," he returned, looking at me in pleased surprise.
He left this morning on an early train, to go back to the peg and grind, and now the place is slow and lonesome. After all I think it is better to have to peg and grind; it surely must be the spice of life which rich people miss. I do not care how quickly the hot months pass, and we can go back to the city again.
Sept. 30th, 1——
We are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but there is a new excitement in the air. Aunt Gwendolin insists that I require to go to some fashionable "Young Ladies' Boarding School," to be "finished." She says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that I do not talk as I should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and I must learn the tone of society ladies before I can be brought out.
"You mean the artificial tone?" said Uncle Theodore, who was present when I was getting my lecture.
"Call it what you like, Theodore," snapped Aunt Gwendolin, "it is the tone used by an American society woman; the girl talks yet in the natural voice of a child."
"Would that she could always keep it," returned Uncle Theodore.