"See how bright the sun has come out! Don't you want to wrap yourself up and let me take you down to the store and over to Abner Angel's? I have an errand over there, and it is just a nice ride."
[CHAPTER XX.]
ROCK BOTTOM.
THE missionary society was successful. The scheme was propounded to the teachers first, and met with only as much opposition as brought out Doctor Campbell in a sermon, in which he brought up one after another all the ordinary objections to missionary work and disposed of them in a very satisfactory manner. The children entered into the matter with enthusiasm, and, so far from the general interests of the school suffering, they evidently gained.
Marion's health continued very delicate all through the cold weather; but when spring came on, she seemed to take a sudden start, and improved very rapidly. She gained strength and flesh, suffered less pain, and was able to go about the house and to walk out. Nobody who has not tried it knows the expansion of heart felt by an invalid who first gets out in the spring after a winter's long confinement.
Marion thought nothing could ever have been so beautiful as the starting leaves, the bunches of hepaticas, spring beauties, and trailing arbutus which the boys brought her. She got herself well laughed at for declaring that there were no ferns in Holford, or if there were, they did not come up with such dear little fuzzy, curly heads.
"Well, all I can say is that I must have got a new pair of eyes, then, for I am sure I never noticed them," said Marion, defending herself good-humouredly.
"'There fell from his eyes as it had been scales,'" quoted Uncle Duncan, in a low voice.
"But didn't you have any botany classes in school?" asked Frank, in whose mind ignorance of botany implied ignorance of all things worth knowing in this world.
"Oh yes; Miss Oliver and some of the older girls used to make great times over flowers, and so on. But somehow I never cared for botany; it seemed to me all hard words. The truth is, I don't think I paid any more attention to any of my lessons than I could help in those days."