"Very likely," answered Marion. "I dare say Sam Bryant has told him the story of his seeing Tone up on Blue Hill, Saturday. I hope it is not true, but Laura says Sam is quite sure. I shall be afraid to stir away from home if he is round, shall not you? He is such a desperate character."
"Really, Marie, I have lived so much among desperate characters of late years that I think I have become rather hardened to them. If you imagine Tone Beaubien multiplied by five hundred, you will have some faint notion of our neighbours at our last country station. But I hope with you that Sam may be mistaken, for it would be a great misfortune to the whole family if Tone should come back. That is one trouble of one member of a family taking to evil courses. The disgrace of one is reflected on all the rest."
Marion felt as if her aunt had given her a slap without meaning it. She hastily changed the subject:
"Have you ever read this book, aunt? I think it is perfectly splendid."
Mrs. Campbell took the book and looked at it:
"Yes, we had it on the ship, and I read it while on board."
"And didn't you like it very much? Don't you think Maria is well drawn?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "I think it was grand for her to take her career into her own hands and insist on doing something worth while, instead of wasting her time and talents in that humdrum old place with stupid people. If I could only see something like that opening before me, I should have some courage to live," said Marion, pathetically "as it is, I haven't one bit."
Mrs. Campbell had not been teaching since she was sixteen without becoming acquainted with the genus girl in almost all its varieties. "Oh, you sentimental little gosling!" was her inward thought, but she showed no signs even of amusement.
"But, Marion, if I recollect rightly, these humdrum people had taken Maria when she was an orphan child, and had stinted themselves to give her support and education. Don't you think she owed them some duty? Was it a very exalted course of action to go away from them the moment she was able, leaving her benefactors, in their old age and loneliness, unaided and uncomforted? Was it right to treat them in that way?"
"One's first duty is one's own development and improvement," said Marion, grandiloquently, yet with a certain uneasy consciousness that the words and Miss Oliver's late lecture did not go well together.