"Certainly she was the last person I should have picked out for the purpose when I first knew her," said Uncle Duncan.
"It was a grand thing for Marion, coming to the valley," replied Christian. "It was the making of her. But she had not a fair chance to show what was in her at home. She was badly spoiled."
"How spoiled?"
"By being regularly trained into selfishness. Barbara meant well, as she always does, but she made a great mistake, or so it seems to me. Instead of training Marion to wait upon others and to find her pleasure in so doing, she made herself a slave to Marion. To one so brought up, nothing better could have happened than to be thrown into a large family of good-natured people and made to stand on her own merits. Poor child! She must have suffered dreadfully in the disenchanting process. She was so firmly convinced of her own superiority."
"It was a very successful process. Marion is as little self-conscious at present as any girl I ever saw."
It was Asahel who made the first practical suggestion:
"Marie wants to try her strength. The teacher in the Jones district has given out. The school-house is three miles off. Let Marion teach the last three weeks of the school, riding over on the old pony in the morning and back at night. That will be a pretty fair trial of her strength. If she stands that, she may think of the other thing."
"A very good idea," pronounced Doctor Campbell. "The road is a safe one, and the pony a nice, easy goer. It will be a very good test in more ways than one."
Marion accepted the test with enthusiasm. She was fond both of teaching and riding, and she had a special interest in the Jones district. For a week or two she enjoyed her rides very much, and said quite honestly that they did not hurt her at all. Then she began to lie down a little before tea, to go to bed pretty early, and to gratify her friends in the district by accepting invitations to stay all night.
She persevered to the end of the quarter and rode home as usual, but she went to bed directly after tea, and did not get up again for a week.