"No; I am your cousin Janet."
"Oh, I always thought Janet was a girl's name. I am glad you are a boy. I like boys a great deal the best."
Here Charley was interrupted by his mother's entrance. Mrs. Atwood had composed herself, and had come to the conclusion that she might as well make the best of it. She greeted Janet in a manner rather constrained and embarrassed, and yet not cold enough to be wounding; and this she thought was doing wonders.
The next day was Sunday, and Mrs. Atwood saw, with dismay, Janet preparing to go to church in the same attire.
"Have you no long dresses that you could wear to-day, my dear?" she asked. "We are so unaccustomed here to see anything of that kind, that I am afraid it will attract more attention than you would like."
"No," replied Janet, with a composure that was not a little irritating to Mrs. Atwood, "I did not bring any with me. I promised father that I would wear this dress at least a year."
Jane Atwood had a convenient headache, which prevented her from accompanying the rest of the family to church, and Mrs. Atwood had to bear the whole brunt of the popular amazement and curiosity, as, followed by a Bloomer, she made her entrance among the assembled congregation. The walk up the aisle was accomplished with a flurried haste, very unlike the usual grave decorum on which Mrs. Atwood piqued herself, and, slipping into her pew, she sat for some minutes without venturing to raise her eyes.
Miss McLeod did not share her aunt's perturbation. She appeared, in fact, hardly conscious of being an object of general remark, but addressed herself to the duties of the sanctuary with a countenance as calm and tranquil as a summer's day. A very sweet and rural face she had, as unlike her startling style of dress as anything could well be. Having always lived in the country, surrounded by an unsophisticated kind of people who had known her from her infancy, and loved her for her father's sake as well as her own, and who, reverencing Mr. McLeod for his noble and kindly traits of character, looked upon his many crotchets as the outbursts of a generous, if an undisciplined nature, Janet had never learned to fear the criticism or the ridicule of the unsympathetic world.
Like most persons brought up in the sheltered seclusion of the country, far away from the bustle and turmoil of the city, where every faculty is kept in activity by the constant demand upon its attention, her mind was slow in its operations, and her perceptions were not very quick. At ease in herself, because convinced by her father's advice and persuasions that she was in the path of duty, she hardly observed the astonishment and remark of which she was the object. What Bulwer Lytton calls "the broad glare of the American eye" fell upon her as ineffectually as sunshine on a rock.
With a disposition naturally dependent, and inclined to believe rather than to doubt and examine for herself, she had grown up with such a deep reverence for her father, and with such an entire belief in him, that the idea of questioning the propriety or soundness of his opinions never entered her mind. It was hard labor for one so practical and unimaginative as Janet to follow up the vagaries of a man like Mr. McLeod, and it was one of the strongest proofs of her great affection for him, that she had laid aside her own correct judgment and good sense to do so.