Then Mrs. Andrews had come to find her.
"I am not coming down," sobbed Marion.
"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mrs. Andrews, kindly but decidedly. "That would be very silly. There is no use in wasting the whole day because you have begun it badly. The way to manifest repentance is not by crying over your fault, but by owning it and trying to do better."
"I don't think I did anything so very dreadful," said Marion, as usual in arms for her own defence.
"Do you remember how angry you were the other day because Bessy told you she didn't want you interfering with her Latin lessons?" said Mrs. Andrews.
"Well, Bessy was very impertinent to me, and she always is impertinent. She ought to remember that I am her aunt and a great deal older than she."
"Well, which demands most respect, an aunt or a mother? However, there is no time to argue the point. I shall expect you in the school-room in ten minutes."
Marion came down in the required time, but she was very sulky, and went to her own room again the moment school was over. She never spoke a word at the dinner-table, but nobody seemed to notice her silence, and she felt that her offended dignity was all thrown away.
Marion had been disappointed in every way. Idle as she had been in school for the last two years, she had somehow imagined that she should be very much in advance of her brothers, and she had made the most amiable plans for helping them in their studies. But, alas! even little Rob and Hector were better at parsing English than herself. Bram criticised her false quantities in Latin without mercy, and even Mrs. Andrews smiled at some of her translations. Instead of being prepared to help her brothers, she was obliged to strain every nerve in the endeavour to keep up with them. The idle and careless habits of study in which she had lately indulged did not help her at all. It was very mortifying.
Marion had not forgotten her resolution to help her mother in housekeeping, but she was as unfortunate in this as in other directions. She had begun by putting the boys' rooms in order, beginning with Frank's and Abram's, where she had found stored away a great quantity of trash, as she called it. There was a long set of shelves, evidently of domestic manufacture, filled with labelled stones and specimens of various kinds, and all, it must be acknowledged, somewhat dusty, while in a large basket in one corner were piled a quantity of short sticks of wood.