"What!" said Mrs. Presbit, when Vinnie's determination was announced to her, "you will go and work for a sister who has treated you so shamefully all these years? Only a half-sister, at that! I'm astonished at you! I thought you had more sperit."
"For anything she may have done wrong, I am sure she is sorry enough now," Vinnie replied.
"Yes, now she has need of you!" sneered Mrs. Presbit.
"Besides," Vinnie continued, "I ought to go, for the children's sake, if not for hers. Think of Cecie and the poor baby; and Lilian not ten years old, trying to do the housework! I can do so much for them!"
"No doubt of that; for I must say you are as handy and willing a girl as ever I see. But there's the Betterson side to the family,—two great, lubberly boys, according to your friend's account; a proud, domineering set, I warrant ye! The idee of making a slave of yourself for them! You'll find it a mighty uncomf'table place, mark my word!"
"I hope no more so than the place I am in now,—excuse me for saying it, Aunt Presbit," added Vinnie, in a trembling voice. "It isn't your fault. But you know how things are."
"O, la, yes! she wants to go ahead, and order everything; and I think it's as well to let her,—though she'll find she can't run over me! But I don't blame you the least mite, Vinnie, for feeling sensitive; and if you've made up your mind to go, I sha'n't hender ye,—I'll help ye all I can."
So it happened that, only four days after the receipt of her sister's letter, Vinnie, with all her worldly possessions contained in one not very large trunk, bid her friends good by, and, not without misgivings, set out alone on her long journey.
She took a packet-boat on the canal for Buffalo. At Buffalo, with the assistance of friends she had made on board the boat, she found the captain of a schooner, who agreed to give her a passage around the lakes to Chicago, for four dollars. There were no railroads through Northern Ohio and across Michigan and Indiana in those days; and although there were steamboats on the lakes, Vinnie found that a passage on one of them would cost more money than she could afford. So she was glad to go in the schooner.
The weather was fine, the winds favored, and the Heron made a quick trip. Vinnie, after two or three days of sea-sickness, enjoyed the voyage, which was made all the more pleasant to her by the friendship of the captain and his wife.