This was on Monday night, and she began by telling us that Miss Judy Curran was coming the next day, to make our fall and winter frocks, and that there would be a pretty busy time with us all for the rest of the month, as we were going to school in Richmond, the fifth day of October.
"Your father and I do not believe in boarding-schools," she continued. "We think that God gives our children to us to be brought up and educated, as far as possible, by us, their parents, and not to be made over to hirelings at the very time when they are most easily led right or wrong. There are, however, excellent reasons why you should begin now to know more of the world than you can learn in a quiet country neighborhood such as this. We are thankful to be able to give you the advantages of a city school, without depriving you of good home-training. You are to live with your Cousin Molly Belle, and be day-scholars in Mrs. Nunham's seminary."
Even Mary 'Liza gave a little jump under the sheet at the astounding news, while I leaped clean out of bed, and danced around the room in my night-gown, clapping my hands and uttering small shrieks of ecstasy.
"Hurrah! hurrah! goody! goody! mother! it is like a fairy tale!"
I was somewhat abashed, and decidedly ashamed of my transport when the blessèd mother said gently, after a little sigh:—
"Of course I shall miss my daughters sadly, but I hope what we are doing is for their good. If I were less sure of this, I could not part with them."
From the hour in which her first-born baby was laid in her arms, until she closed her eyes in the sleep from which our wild weeping could not awaken her, her ever-present thought was the children's best good. Nothing that could secure that was self-denial on her part.
I have come to Richmond to write this chapter. From my window I look down upon the pavement trodden by my feet twice a day for ten months out of twelve, during four school years. The house in which I sojourn belongs to a younger brother of him who figures in my story as "Bud." It occupies the site of the large, yellow frame building in which Mrs. Nunham taught her "young ladies," more than forty years ago.
