CHAPTER XI.
VISIT OF COUSIN ABIJAH.
One afternoon when Marion’s lessons had proved unusually difficult, her room-mates noisy, and obstacles everywhere, it seemed to the diligent scholar, she answered a tap on her door, to find Etta Lawrence, the girl who waited in the hall to announce visitors, with a face full of amusement.
“There’s a man down-stairs asking for you, Marion,” she said. “He started to follow me up-stairs; and when I showed him into the parlor, and told him I would call you, he said,—
“‘’Tain’t no odds, I can jist as well go up; I ain’t afraid of stairs, no way.’ I had hard work to make him go into the parlor, and I left him sitting on the edge of a chair, staring around as if he never had seen such a room before.” Then Etta burst into a merry laugh, in which all the others but Marion joined: she stood still, looking from one of the girls to another, as if she couldn’t imagine what it all meant.
“You must go down to the parlor,” said Dorothy, seeing her hesitation.
“It’s some one from out West,” added Sue.