“I mean to be a true woman.”
This was what she usually said to herself when resolved not to cry. But there was something lonesome in the thought of going to bed without kissing her mother.
“Nobody else feels as I do, and I wouldn’t mention it for anything; but I’d give one quarter of my pin money—one whole dollar—to see mamma and Ethel.”
She had supposed that in camping out all care would be left behind. Her mother had excused her from lessons and sewing, and she had looked for “a state of bliss;” but it is forever true—and Mary was beginning to find it so—that wherever we are, there is “something still to do and bear.”
Homesickness was a constitutional weakness with Mary, but she disdained the cowardice of running home; she would be a “true woman,” and crack walnuts to please Lucy.
“Well, this is a hard-working family,” said Preston, arriving presently in state on his bicycle, as Lucy and Sadie were engaged in putting the supper dishes in the kitchen cupboard.
“Yes, Mr. Gray; and we allow no idlers here. Please may I ask what ails our window shades, sir?”
The poor old green-cloth curtains were tearing away from the gentle clasp of Sadie Patten’s tack-nails, and leaning over from the tops of the windows as if already tired of the sun and wanting a little rest.
“Well, let’s see your hammer.”