“Or she might be round this way by-and-by. She'd revel in this place; she'd maybe not call it quaint, but she'd find it pretty careless about being in the—in the modern rush she talks about, and that would make her happier than a letter from home. I believe The Macintosh—”
“Miss Macintosh, my dear,” said Bell, reprovingly, and the girl reddened.
“I know,” said she. “It's mean to talk of her same as she was a waterproof, and I often try not to, because I like her immensely; but it's so common among the girls that I forget. I believe Miss Macintosh would love this place and could stop in it forever.”
“Couldn't you?” asked Auntie Ailie, slyly.
Bud hesitated. “Well, I—I like it,” said she. “I just love to lie awake nights and think about it, and I can hear the wind in the trees and the tide come in, and the bell, and the wild geese; and family worship at the Provost's on Sunday nights, and I can almost be here, I think so powerfully about it; but—but—” She stopped short, for she saw a look of pain in the face of her auntie Bell.
“But what?” said the latter, sharply.
“Oh, I'm a wicked, cruel, ungrateful girl, Auntie Bell; and I ought to want to love this place so much, nobody could push me out of it. And I do love it, but feel if I lived here always I'd not grow any more.”
“You're big enough,” said Auntie Bell. “You're as big as myself now.”
“I mean inside. Am I a prig, Aunt Ailie? I'd hate to be a prig! But I'd hate as bad to tell a lie; and I feel I'd never learn half so much or do half so much here as I'd do where thousands of folk were moving along in a procession and I was with them, too. A place like this is like a kindergarten—it's good enough as far's it goes, but it doesn't teach the higher branches.”
Bell gazed at her in wonder and pity and blame, shaking her head. All this was what she had anticipated.