When Cousin Charles put us into the carriage, and hoisted little Edward on the front seat, mother noticed that two men held the horses, and that they were not the same he had driven the night before. She said she was afraid to go, they looked ungovernable; but he reassured her, and one of the men averring that Mr. Morgeson could drive anything, she repressed her fears, and we drove out of the yard behind a pair of horses that stood on their hind legs as often as that position was compatible with the necessity they were under of getting on, for they evidently understood that they were guided by a firm hand. Edward was delighted with their behavior, and for the first time I saw his father smile on him.
"These are fine brutes," he said, not taking his eyes from them; "but they are not equal to my mare, Nell. Alice is afraid of her; but I hope that you, Cassandra, will ride with me sometimes when I drive her."
"Oh!" exclaimed mother, grasping my arm.
"You would, would you?" he said, taking out the whip, as the horses recoiled from a man who lay by the roadside, leaping so high that the harness seemed rattling from their backs. He struck them, and said, "Go on now, go on, devils." There was no further trouble. He encouraged mother not to be afraid, looking keenly at me. I looked back at him.
"How much worse is the mare, cousin Charles?"
"You shall see."
After driving round the town we stopped at the Academy. Morning prayers were over, and the scholars, some sixty boys and girls, were coming downstairs from the hall, to go into the rooms, each side of a great door. Dr. Price was behind them. He stopped when he saw us, an introduction took place, and he inquired for Dr. Snell, as an old college friend. Locke Morgeson sounded familiarly, he said; a member of his mother's family named Somers had married a gentleman of that name. He remembered it from an old ivory miniature which his mother had shown him, telling him it was the likeness of her cousin Rachel's husband. I replied we knew that grandfather had married a Rachel Somers. Cousin Charles was surprised and a little vexed that the doctor had never told him, when he must have known that he had been anxiously looking up the Morgeson pedigree; but the doctor declared he had not thought of it before, and that only the name of Locke had recalled it to his mind. He then proposed our going to Miss Prior, the lady who had charge of the girls' department, and we followed him to her school-room.
I was at once interested and impressed by the appearance of my teacher that was to be. She was a dignified, kind-looking woman, who asked me a few questions in such a pleasant, direct manner that I frankly told her I was eighteen years old, very ignorant, and averse from learning; but I did not speak loud enough for anybody beside herself to hear.
"Now," said mother, when we came away, "think how much greater your advantages are than mine have ever been. How miserable was my youth! It is too late for me to make any attempt at cultivation. I have no wish that way. Yet now I feel sometimes as if I were leaving the confines of my old life to go I know not whither, to do I know not what."
But her countenance fell when she heard that Dr. Price had been a
Unitarian minister, and that there was no Congregational church in
Rosville.