"Sweetened with brown sugar, ain't it?" said Rose sipping a little of the tea.
In great distress the good old lady replied that she was out of white sugar, but some folks loved brown just as well.
"Ugh! Take it away," said Rose. "It makes me sick and I don't believe I can eat another mite," but in spite of her belief the food rapidly disappeared, while she alternately made fun of the little silver spoons, her grandmother's bridal gift, and found fault because the jelly was not put up in porcelain jars, instead of the old blue earthen tea-cup, tied over with a piece of paper!
Until a late hour that night, did Rose keep the whole household (her mother excepted) on the alert, doing the thousand useless things which her nervous fancy prompted. First the front door, usually secured with a bit of whittled shingle, must be nailed, "or somebody would break in." Next, the windows, which in the rising wind began to rattle, must be made fast with divers knives, scissors, combs and keys; and lastly, the old clock must be stopped, for Rose was not accustomed to its striking, and it would keep her awake.
"Dear me!" said the tired old grandmother, when, at about midnight, she repaired to her own cosy little bedroom, "how fidgety she is. I should of s'posed that livin' in the city so, she'd got used to noises."
In a day or two Mr. Lincoln and Jenny went back to Boston, bearing with them a long list of articles which Rose must and would have. As they were leaving the house Mrs Howland brought out her black leathern wallet, and forcing two ten dollar bills into Jenny's hand, whispered, "Take it to pay for them things. Your pa has need enough for his money, and this is some I've earned along, knitting, and selling butter. At first I thought I would get a new chamber carpet, but the old one answers my turn very well, so take it and buy Rose every thing she wants."
And all this time the thankless girl up stairs was fretting and muttering about her grandmother's stinginess, in not having a better carpet "than the old faded thing which looked as if manufactured before the flood!"
CHAPTER XXIX.
A NEW DISCOVERY.
On the same day when Rose Lincoln left Boston for Glenwood, Mrs. Campbell sat in her own room, gloomy and depressed. For several days she had not been well, and besides that, Ella's engagement with Henry Lincoln filled her heart with dark forebodings, for rumor said that he was unprincipled, and dissipated, and before giving her consent Mrs. Campbell had labored long with Ella, who insisted "that he was no worse than other young men,—most of them drank occasionally, and Henry did nothing more!"