Her grandmother acknowledged the introduction, her Aunt Nan also. The Colonel shook hands with Virginia, and reiterated his intention to call upon her at school. “With your permission, my dear madam,” he added, by his cultured manner quite convincing Mrs. Webster that he was a gentleman. Then he hurried aboard his train, and left a gray-eyed girl with a heart beating tumultuously inside a blue suit to go on a waiting northbound train toward Vermont. As his train pulled out from the station, the Colonel completed his sentence.
“If they don’t approve of that little girl,” he said to himself, with an emphatic slap upon his knee; “if they don’t approve of her, then they’re-they’re hopeless, as that grandson of mine says, and I shouldn’t care to make their acquaintance further.”
Meanwhile Virginia was fixedly gazing out of the window, as the train, leaving Springfield, carried them northward. She tried to be interested in the strange, new country about her; but some way, instead of the crimson maples and yellow goldenrod, there would come before her eyes a cottonwood bordered creek, a gap between brown foothills, a stretch of rolling prairie land, black and green and gold, and in the distance the hazy, snow-covered summits of far away mountains. But with the picture came again Donald’s words—words that made her swallow the lump in her throat, and smile at her grandmother and Aunt Nan.
“No, the East isn’t like this—not a bit, and maybe you won’t like it; but you’re too plucky to be homesick, Virginia!”
CHAPTER IV—VERMONT AS VIRGINIA SAW IT
It was not until the afternoon of the second day in Vermont that Virginia wrote her father. The evening before she had said “Good-night” as early as she thought polite to her grandmother, Aunt Nan, and the minister who had come to call, and, upon being asked, willingly stayed to tea, and had gone up-stairs to the room which had been her mother’s to write her father about everything. But somehow the words would not come, though she sat for an hour at the quaint little mahogany desk and tried to write; and it all ended by her going to bed, holding close her mother’s old copy of “Scottish Chiefs,” which Aunt Nan had placed in her room, and forgetting in sleep the thoughts that would come in spite of her.
But now that the hardest first night was over, and the first forenoon, which she had spent walking with Aunt Nan, had gone, she must write him all about it. She sat down again at the quaint little desk, over which hung the picture of a girl of sixteen with clear, frank eyes, and began:
“Webster, Vermont, Sept. 18, 19—
“Father dearest:
“Do you remember how the poor queen in the fairy tale dreaded to meet the dwarf because she knew she didn’t know his name? Well, that was just like me when the train was near Springfield. If it hadn’t been for the dear Colonel, whom I told you about in my train letter, I don’t believe I could ever have been as calm as I truly outwardly was; because, daddy, I felt as though I didn’t know grandmother at all, any more than the poor queen, and I did dread seeing her. But I was tidy, and my heart didn’t beat on the outside, for which blessings I could well be thankful. The Colonel carried my bag for me, and that made it easier, for, of course, family pride forbade my allowing him to see that my grandmother and I weren’t really well acquainted.
“And, after all, it wasn’t so bad. Aunt Nan is dear, father, like mother, I know, and I love her already. She is not so proper as grandmother. I kissed Aunt Nan, and grandmother kissed me. That explains the way they made me feel, Grandmother is handsome, isn’t she? And stately, like an old portrait. But when you talk with her you feel as though there were some one else inside your skin.
“I do hope they don’t disapprove of me now, and will by and by care for me for mother’s sake and yours. Aunt Nan likes me now, I am sure, and grandmother, I am reasonably sure, doesn’t dislike me, though I think she considers me somewhat puzzling. She looks at me sometimes like we used to look at the tame foxes, when we weren’t sure what they were going to do next.
“Do you remember how the country looked coming from Springfield to Webster, when you came with mother? It was in September when you came, you said, and I remembered it. The creeks, which they call ‘brooks’ here, are lovely, though not so swift as ours, and the oaks and maples are a wonderful color in among the fir trees. I know you remember the goldenrod and asters, because mother always told about them. Didn’t you miss the quaking-asps, father? I did the first thing, and asked grandmother about them,—if none grew in Vermont. She didn’t know what I was talking about. She had no idea it was a tree, and thought I meant a bug, like that which killed poor Cleopatra. But I missed them, and I think the fall is sadder without them, because they are always so merry. I missed the cottonwoods, too. Aunt Nan said there were a few of those in New England, but they called them Carolina poplars.
“The little villages in among the hills are pretty, aren’t they?—so clean and white—but they don’t seem to care about the rest of the world at all, it seems to me. Webster is like that, too, I think, though it is lovely. If you remember how it looked when you were here, then I don’t need to describe it, for Aunt Nan says it hasn’t changed any. When we reached here, and were driving up towards the house, grandmother asked me how I liked Webster, and I said it was beautiful, but it seemed very small. She couldn’t understand me at all, and said she didn’t see how it could seem small to me when we didn’t live in a town at all in Wyoming. I was afraid I had been impolite, and I was just trying to explain that I meant it seemed shut in because you couldn’t see the country all around like you could at home, when we stopped at the house, and saw a gentleman coming toward us with a black suit and a cane. Grandmother looked at Aunt Nan, and Aunt Nan at grandmother, and they both said at once, ‘Dr. Baxter!’
“‘We must invite him to tea,’ said grandmother. ‘It would never do not to!’
“‘Nonsense!’ said Aunt Nan. ‘I don’t see why.’
“Well, he came up to the carriage just as grandmother finished whispering, ‘Our pastor, Virginia,’ and handed grandmother out, and then Aunt Nan, and lastly me. I tried to be especially polite when grandmother introduced me, remembering how she had warned me that he was the minister; but somehow all I could think of was the parson in the ‘Birds of Killingworth,’ because, when I first saw him coming down the street, he was hitting the goldenrod with his cane, and some way I just know he preaches about the ‘wrath of God,’ too, just like the Killingworth parson. He did stay to tea, though I’m sure Aunt Nan didn’t want him, and I, not being used to ministers, didn’t want him either; but I put on one of my new dresses, as grandmother said, and tried to be an asset and not a liability. But, father, I know grandmother was troubled, and, in a way, displeased, because of the following incident:
“Dr. Baxter is bald and wears eye-glasses on a string, and the end of his nose quivers like a rabbit’s, and he rubs his hands, which are rather plump, together a great deal. Some way, father, you just feel as though he didn’t care away down deep about you at all, but was just curious. I am sorry if I am wrong about him, but I can’t help feeling that way. All through tea he talked about the Christianizing of Korea, and the increased sale of the Bible, and how terrible it was that China wasn’t going to make Christianity the state religion. He didn’t pay much attention to me, and I thought he had forgotten all about me, when all at once he looked at me across the table and said:
“‘And to what church do you belong, Miss Virginia?’
“Poor grandmother looked so uncomfortable that I felt sorry for her, and after I had said, ‘I don’t belong to any, Dr. Baxter,’ she tried to explain about our living on a ‘large farm’ (I don’t believe grandmother thinks ranches are real proper) and not being near a church.
“Aunt Nan tried to change the subject, but Dr. Baxter just wouldn’t have it changed, and after looking at me thoughtfully for a few moments, he said:
“‘I wonder that our Home Mission Board does not send candidates to that needy field. Do you have no traveling preachers, Miss Virginia?’
“Grandmother looked so uneasy that I did try to say just the right thing, father, but I guess I made a mistake, because I told him that we did have traveling preachers sometimes, only we didn’t feel that we needed just the kind of preaching they gave. His nose quivered more than ever, and grandmother tried to explain again only she didn’t know how, and at last he said:
“‘If the Word is not appreciated in Wyoming, it is elsewhere, thank God!’—just as though Wyoming were a wilderness where ‘heathen in their blindness bow down to wood and stone.’ Grandmother looked more mortified than ever, and the silence grew so heavy that you could hear it whirring in your ears. By and by we did leave the table, and then I excused myself to write to you, but I couldn’t seem to write at all, I felt so troubled about mortifying poor grandmother. This morning I thought she would speak of it, but she didn’t, and perhaps, if I make no more slips, she will forget about it. It is very difficult to be a constant credit to one’s family, especially when it requires so much forethought.
“Grandmother feels very bad because she has no son to carry on the family name. When she and Aunt Nan and Aunt Lou die, she says ‘the name will vanish from this town where it has been looked up to for two hundred years.’
“It makes a great difference in Webster how one does things—even more than what one does. This morning, when Aunt Nan and I were going to walk, Aunt Nan said, ‘I think we’ll run in to see Mrs. Dexter, mother. She’ll want to see Virginia.’ And grandmother said, ‘Not in the morning, Nan. It would never do!’ So we have to go in the afternoon. I told Aunt Nan when we were walking that at home we called on our friends any time, and she said she wished she lived in Wyoming! She could ‘belong’ to us, father, but I’m afraid grandmother never could enjoy Jim and William and the others. She is too Websterized.
“Wasn’t it thoughtful of Aunt Nan to put mother’s old ‘Scottish Chiefs’ on my table? It has all her markings in it. Last night—but I won’t tell you, because you will think I am homesick, and I’m not! Please tell Don.
“Do you remember the view of the Green Mountains from the window in mother’s room? I can see them now as I write you. They are beautiful, but so dressed up with trees that they don’t seem so friendly and honest as our little brown foot-hills. Oh, daddy, I do miss the mountains so, and our great big country! Last night when I tried to write you and couldn’t, I stood by the window and watched the moon come up over the hills; and I couldn’t think of anything but a poem that kept running through my head like this:
To gaze on the mountains with those you love
Inspires you to do right;
But the hills of Vermont without those you love
Are but a sorry sight!
“Aunt Nan is waiting for me down-stairs. I can hear her and grandmother talking together. Oh, I wonder if they do approve of me!
“Father, dear, give my love to Jim and Hannah and Mr. Weeks and Alec and William and Joe and Dick and all the Keiths, and tell them I think of them every day. Give Pedro sugar as often as you remember, won’t you?—and if the lump in the littlest collie’s throat doesn’t go away soon, please kill him, because I don’t want him to suffer.
“I do love you so much, father dearest, that if I tell you any more about it, I’ll quite break my promise to myself.
“Virginia.
“P. S. Just think, daddy, Aunt Nan says you must come East in June to get me and visit them. She said also when we were walking that you were a fine-looking man; and I told her that you were not only that, but that you were fine all the way through, and that every one in Sheridan County knew it!—V. W. H.”
And while Virginia wrote her letter to her father in the room which had been her mother’s, downstairs, in the library, her grandmother and Aunt Nan talked together.
“I must admit, Nan, she isn’t nearly so wild as I expected after having been brought up in that wilderness.”