They forded a stream and came to the old mill, standing half-buried in the marsh. Part of the roof was off and the rank, clambering vine of the wild grape had reached up and hung over the sides in graceful festoons. Their appearance started up a number of yellow butterflies that had been fluttering over the stream, and now rose in the air like a shower of golden sparks.
"How beautiful it all is," said Amanda. "I am glad to be home again. But where is Alex taking us?"
"To Benvenew, of course," Mrs. Powell answered. "Why, Mandy, dear, didn't you want to go right there, or would you ruther go home fur to-night? We thought probably you'd both prefer—but the laws knows I'd be glad to have you both come back with me."
"Why, ma, I forgot!" said Amanda. "And so I'm to begin my housekeeping right off. I don't know enough about it to take care of that big place."
"You'll have Ellen Digby to cook," said Mrs. Powell anxiously, "and little Admonia."
"Admonia!" exclaimed Vivian, looking around in some indignation from the front seat. "I can't have that harum-scarum creature on the place."
"You know Ellen really is a good servant," Mrs. Powell explained, apologetically. "And she won't come without the child. Admonia's twelve now, and she's really not so bad. She can be trained. There wasn't anybody else we could lay hands on."
"Never mind, ma, Admonia 'll do well enough," interposed Amanda. "She's a funny little thing, and I rather like her."
"Ex—actly!" Vivian observed, with an accent lately acquired. "I imagine Amanda training anybody."
We all have our secret pet vanities which undiscriminating persons, seeing only our surface beauties, are perpetually wounding. Amanda's vanity was a wish to be acknowledged sensible and practical. Beautiful, she knew herself to be, and to hear of that was an old story; but her executive ability was not yet proved, and she was very sensitive upon this point. And herein Vivian blundered. It did not occur to him that he hurt her feelings by depreciating her executive powers. He had been used to regarding her as a pretty play-thing, something to be petted and disciplined alternately. That she had an ambition to be something more was what he had not yet discovered. Perhaps the idea was one that he would have to blindly grope his way toward; for "we can only comprehend that of which we have the beginnings in ourselves," and in the handsome, suave, popular young Virginian the germ of common sense and good judgment was small; so very much smaller than his little world believed it to be.