Mrs. Cushing laughed, and blushed, and said, "Oh, nonsense!"
But the Doctor looked triumphant.
"As to Dolly," he said, "never fear. She's a tender-hearted little thing, and made herself cry thinking that we should be lonesome, and a dozen other little pretty kindly things that set her tears going. She's a precious child, and we shall miss her. I have settled her mind as to the church question."
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
DOLLY'S FIRST LETTER FROM BOSTON.
My Dear Parents: Here I am in Boston at last, and take the very first quiet opportunity to write to you. Hiel Jones said he would call and tell you immediately about how we got through the first day. He was very kind and attentive to us all day, taking care at every stopping-place to get the bricks heated, so that our feet were kept quite warm, and in everything he was so thoughtful and obliging that Aunt Deborah in time quite forgave him for presuming on his rights as a human being to keep up a free conversation with us at intervals, which he did with his usual cheerful goodwill.
It amuses me all the time to talk with Aunty. All her thoughts are of a century back, and she is so unconscious and positive about them that it is really entertaining. All this talk about the "lower classes," and the dangers to be apprehended from them; of "first families" and their ways and laws and opinions; and of the impropriety of being too familiar with common people, amuses me. She seems to me like a woman in a book—one of the old-world people one reads of in Scott's novels. She is very kind to me; no mother could be kinder—but all in a sort of taking-possession way. She tells me where to sit, and what to do, and what to wear, and seems to feel a comfortable sense that she has me now all to herself. It amuses me to think how little she knows of what I really am inside.