"Well, bairns, it is quite time we were all abed," said old Hector. "I think we have all decided rightly, and that it is best for the lassie to go. If the arrangement does not answer, she can always come back. Poor thing! She knows no more of what is before her than a chicken before it chips the shell."
Marion withdrew from the window and hastily prepared for bed. She was sure of going, that was one comfort. But to think that grandfather should call her "a spoiled child," and think that Aunt Barbara had been her "slave!"
"Perhaps they may find out the difference when I am gone," said she proudly. "Perhaps when Aunt Baby finds she has all the errands and the rest on her hands, she will know that she has not done everything, But never mind, let her think so if it does her any good, poor soul! I dare say it does look that way to her. People do so like to think themselves abused, and it is a pity if she can't enjoy the privilege. I am sure I won't do anything to destroy the illusion." So magnanimously resolved Marion, who always bitterly resented being thought better off than her neighbours.
[CHAPTER X.]
GOING AND STAYING.
MARION waked in the morning with a general impression that something very delightful had happened, but it was some minutes before she could disentangle her recollections. At last, however, it came to her. She was really going away, going to begin the world anew as she had wished. She was going where she would have a chance to show what she could do, and where she would not be looked down upon, and treated like a baby, as she was now.
As she lay and looked round her pretty little room with its old-fashioned furniture almost black with age, the carved cabinet which did duty as a bureau, the looking-glass with its queer frame of black wood and tarnished gilding, the muslin-covered toilet-table which Aunt Baby had dressed up in one of her own old flowered dresses as a surprise for Marion's birthday, she wondered how it would seem to wake in a new place.
"Of course I shall go to work and make my room as pretty as I can. I mean to begin some mats and tidies and a scrap-bag, and have some glasses for flowers. I mean to ask Aunt Baby to let me have father's pictures and hang them up—at least some of them. Perhaps some day I shall have a fine house and picture galleries of my own, and then dear father's works shall be appreciated at last. Of course poor dear Aunt Baby could not be expected to see anything in them."
Then returning to her room: "I shall have my Bible and books of course, and when the little boys come in to see me, as I shall let them when they are very good, I shall read to them and tell them Bible stories. Perhaps I shall get them to have family worship after a while."
Marion lay indulging in these delightful visions till the striking clock warned her that it was time to get up. She had resolved on being very kind and amiable to everybody, so as to leave none but pleasant remembrances behind her. Especially she would be very considerate to Aunt Baby. After all, she had meant to be kind, and had been so according to her lights. As Christian said, the idea of her own superiority was firmly fixed in Marion's mind, especially of her superiority to her own family.