"No; I guess she wasn't. She was after every book she could find, before she could speak plain, and when she got hold of one, you might fire off a pistol in the room, and she wouldn't hear it. She crammed her head inside, and I crammed mine outside," said Dolly, laughing; "for I had a real milliner's knack before I left off pantalettes. Why, you never saw any thing like our Maria. She went and sold the only silk gown she had to buy a grammar and dictionary, to learn what she acknowledged was a dead language."
"What a fool!" exclaimed Miss Kip.
"Of course," said Dolly; "letting alone the gown, which was bran new, what was the use of her learning a language that was dead and out of fashion? Well, there was a Professor Clark, who used to come to see her, and you ought to have heard the heathenish noises they made with that 'dead language,' as they called it; it was perfectly ridikilis. He said Maria was an extraordinary girl! as if that was any news, when every body knew she never did any thing like other folks. Why, she'd pretend she saw bears, and dippers, and ple—pleasure-rides, I believe she called them, up among the stars."
"What a fool!" exclaimed Kip, again.
"Yes; and she said the earth was round and hollow, just as if any of us could live in safety, hanging on the outside of an egg-shell, and it turning round all the time, too—it was ridikilis!
"Well, Professor Clark married her, and their house was fixed up with books, and pictures, and every thing of that sort which Maria liked. I never went to see them, for they never talked about any thing that interested me. Maria didn't care a penny whether her bonnet was an old or a new one, so long as it was clean and whole. She had no eyes nor ears for any thing but her books and her husband, till that child was born, and then she acted just so about that. When it was five years old, its father died, and then nothing would do but Maria must go after him, as if there was nobody in the world worth looking at but Professor Clark. She might have got married again, and then I should not have had that child to look after. I know she will turn out just like her mother. She looks just like her, and has all her superfine, good-for-nothing lady ways already.
—"No, I did not have any time at all to look after the fashions in the city. The things there are enough to drive you distracted. Such beautiful big plaid and striped silks; such gay trimmings, and bright shawls. I declare every thing looks so homely here in this village, when I come back, that I am perfectly disgusted. Those old poke bonnets of the Cramm girls, trimmed with that pink ribbon they have worn two seasons, and Mrs. Munroe's rusty-looking black mantilla—it is perfectly disgusting."
"So it is," said the sympathizing Kip, "I am tired to death of them, myself. I really wonder, Dolly, you can make up your mind to stay here in this dull place. Why don't you move into the city?"
"Perhaps, I shall, one of these days," said Dolly, with a toss of her head. "I feel as though I was born to better things. It is dull work for a woman to live all her life alone."
"I know it," said Kip, disconsolately.