Mr. Eastman looked rather askance at the trunk—he had so many budgets of his own, and for his wife. However, they strapped it on the back securely, and the good-bys were uttered for a whole month.
Doris had said hers in the morning. She could not divest herself of a vague presentiment that something would happen to keep Betty until to-morrow. But Martha was to sit in her place at the table.
Now that the reign of slavery was over, the farmers' girls from the country often came in for a while. They were generally taken in as one of the family—indeed, few of them would have come to be put down to the level of a common servant. Many had their old slaves still living with them, and numbers of the quality preferred colored servants.
Jamie boy went out to snowball after dinner. Doris worked a line across her sampler. She was going to begin the alphabet next. There were three kinds of letters. Ordinary capitals like printing, small letters, and writing capitals. These were very difficult, little girls thought.
She put up her work presently, studied her spelling, and went over "nine times." She could say the ten and eleven perfectly, but that very day she had missed on "nine times," and Mrs. Webb told her she had better study it a little more.
"I do wonder if you will ever get through with the multiplication tables!" said Aunt Elizabeth.
Doris sighed. It was hard to be so slow at learning.
"'Nine times' floored me pretty well, I remember," confessed Martha Grant. "There's great difference in children. Some have heads for figures and some don't. My sister Catharine could go all round me. But she's that dumb about sewing—I don't believe you ever saw the beat! She just hates it. She'd like to teach school!"
Doris was very glad to hear that someone else had been slow.
Betty had been out to tea occasionally, and Doris tried to make believe it was so now. They would have missed her more but Martha was a great talker. There were seven children at the Grants', and one son married. They had a big farm and a good deal of stock. Martha's lover had bought a farm also, with a small old house of two rooms. He had to build a new barn, so they would wait for their house. She had a nice cow she had raised, a flock of twelve geese, and her father had promised her the old mare and another cow. She wanted to be married by planting time. She had a nice feather bed and two pairs of pillows and five quilts, beside two wool blankets.