botanical excursions to the fields and woods outside Barmouth; I
might as well join the class at once. It was now in the family of the
Legumes. I accompanied the class on one excursion. Not a soul appeared
to know that I was present, and I declined going again. Composition
I must write once a month. A few more details closed the interview. I
mentioned in it that father desired me to study arithmetic. Miss Black
placed me in a class; but her interests were in the higher and more
elegant branches of education. I made no more advance in the humble
walks of learning than in those adorned by the dissection of flowers,
the disruption of rocks, or the graces of composition. Though I
entered upon my duties under protest, I soon became accustomed to
their routine, and the rest of my life seemed more like a dream of the
future than a realization of the present. I refused to go home at the
end of the month. I preferred waiting, I said, to the end of the year.
I was not urged to change my mind; neither was I applauded for my
resolution. The day that I could have gone home, I asked father to
drive me to Milford, on the opposite side of the river which ran by
Barmouth. I shut my eyes tight, when the horse struck the boards of
the long wooden bridge between the towns, and opened them when we
stopped at an inn by the water side of Milford. Father took me into a
parlor, where sat a handsome, fat woman, hemming towels.

"Is that you, Morgeson?" she said. "Is this your daughter?"

"Yes; can I leave her with you, while I go to the bank? She has not
been here before."

"Lord ha' mercy on us; you clip her wings, don't you? Come here,
child, and let me pull off your pelisse."