[CHAPTER XIV.]
LIFE IN THE WOODS.
SIX weeks had passed since the date of our last chapter. The woods around Hemlock Valley were beginning to put on here and there a dash of red or a shade of brown, and the autumn-blossoming flowers in the gardens were in all their glory; the boys were making daily excursions to the woods to bring home ferns and mosses for the parlour windows. All the "Agricultural Transactions," "Patent-office Reports," and other books of that nature were filled with gay autumn leaves in process of pressing (the only use, by the way, that I ever found for such volumes), and Mrs. Andrews complained pathetically that she could not open an atlas or a dictionary without being covered by a shower of falling foliage.
Marion McGregor was leaning on the gate in front of the house, looking over the fields toward the pasture, and feeling very disconsolate. She was more utterly discontented and unhappy than she had ever been even at Holford, and that was saying a great deal.
We have seen how baseless were all the castles in the air she had built on Hemlock Valley. Instead of a rude, irreligious, ill-bred household, she had found a polite, well-ordered family, the older children kind and helpful to their parents and each other, the younger well governed and affectionate, and all perfectly obedient and respectful—far more so, indeed, than she had ever learned to be.
She had never forgotten—I may say she had never forgiven—her first lesson on that point after her arrival. Some question was being eagerly discussed at the breakfast-table, and Mrs. Van Alstine had pronounced an opinion, to which Marion replied in a tone of contempt:
"Nonsense, mother! How can you say so? That has nothing to do with the matter. You don't know anything about it."
Marion had not intended to show any special disrespect to her mother, of which, to do her justice, she was incapable. She had spoken to Aunt Baby in the same way dozens of times, and unless grandfather happened to hear, nobody took any notice. But now there was a dead silence. Six pair of indignant dark eyes were turned on her at once, and after a moment, Mr. Van Alstine said gravely, but in a tone that carried more weight than a great many scoldings,—
"Marion, my girl, that is not the way to speak to your mother. Don't ever let me hear such a thing again."
Marion was overwhelmed with shame and confusion, but as usual the shame and confusion were not directed so much to the fault as to the impression it had made on others. What would they think of her? How they would look down on her! They would think she had no breeding at all. She burst into tears, rose, and left the table, but nobody came to call her back or took any notice of her till school time.