They really had to stay in Boston one night. They would fain have kept Cynthia for a week, but she said she was tired of just changing from one frock to another, and longed for more variety.
"And I'm so glad to get back home again," she cried delightedly. "I've had a splendid time, and I like Anthony ever so much. Cousin Giles was so nice and fatherly. He ought to adopt Anthony and give him his name, and that would always make me think of father. But after all, home is best. Oh, suppose I was a waif, just being handed from one to another!"
She looked frightened with the imaginary lot. She expressed emotions so easily.
"You couldn't have been;" hoarsely.
"Cousin Chilian, if you had not been in the world, or if you hadn't been willing to take me—I don't think father knew much about Cousin Giles—why, I must have gone to strangers."
There were tears in her eyes, and a sweet melancholy in her voice.
She had so much to tell Cousin Eunice that it seemed really as if she had taken the journey with them. She put on Jane's faded gingham sunbonnet and gave her voice a queer nasal twang, and talked as some of the women did up there in the wilderness, who thought a city "must be an awfully crowdy place an' she jes' didn't see how people managed to live in it. An' as fer the sea, give her dry land every time."
Then she talked the French-English patois of the emigrants from Canada, and told of their funny attire, and their log huts, sometimes with only one big room, with a stone chimney in the centre, and sawed logs for seats.
"They did that in Salem nigh on to two hundred years ago," said Cousin Eunice.
"How much people do learn by living," remarked the little girl sagely.