“No, dear, it is not for punishment, but because I see ample reason for leaving any one girl free from individual responsibility. I will give her into the care of you all.”
“Make her a kind of child of the regiment,” said Delia.
“Yes, exactly that. You five may consider yourselves in honor bound to look after the interests of poor Mary Ann.”
“I am going to begin by teaching her grammar,” said Bell, at which the others quite laughed, for Bell was very weak on that branch of learning. “Well, you needn’t laugh. I don’t say ‘you be’ and ‘I haint,’ and I don’t think there’s any harm in my telling her not to do it.”
“You will be astonished when I tell you,” said Mrs. Abbott, “that Mary Ann is well grounded in grammar and rhetoric, but she has spent her life where no practical use of them is made in conversation; so the poor girl does not know how to talk; but as soon as she catches the idea that her speech is different from others she will bend every nerve to changing it. Her great ambition is to become a teacher and earn enough to educate her brothers and sisters.”
“Six of them!” groaned Katie.
“How is she to get clothes?” asked Bell, thinking of the thick shoes and the vivid plaid. “She wouldn’t be so bad if she dressed like other folks.”
“I should have attended to that before she came,” said Mrs. Abbott, “but when I recovered I felt unwilling to stay among the mountains, and driving was no longer a pleasure to me, so we went to Narragansett for the rest of the vacation, leaving the care of getting Mary Ann down here in time for school opening with Mrs. Perkins, the hotel-keeper’s wife. I have already set the girl who has been engaged to make Elfie’s dresses to work upon a navy-blue cashmere for Mary Ann, and shoes of a more girlish appearance she shall have this afternoon.”
“And may I bring you some cuffs and collars for her?” asked Bell. “Mamma always packs up such an insane quantity of them for me. I never use half of them.”
“And I can give her lots of hair-ribbons,” said Katie.