"Locke Morgeson's daughter can do anything," commented the villagers.
In consequence of the unlimited power accorded me I was unpopular.
"Do you think she is handsome?" inquired my friends of each other. "In
what respect _can_ she be called a beauty?" "Though she reads, she
has no great wit," said one. "She dresses oddly for effect," another
avowed, "and her manners are ridiculous." But they borrowed my dresses
for patterns, imitated my bonnets, and adopted my colors. When I
learned to manage a sailboat, they had an aquatic mania. When I
learned to ride a horse, the ancient and moth-eaten sidesaddles of the
town were resuscitated, and old family nags were made back-sore
with the wearing of them, and their youthful spirits revived by new
beginners sliding about on their rounded sides. My whims were sneered
at, and then followed. Of course I was driven from whim to whim, to
keep them busy, and to preserve my originality, and at last I became
eccentric for eccentricity's sake. All this prepared the way for my
Nemesis. But as yet my wild oats were green and flourishing in the
field of youth.






CHAPTER XIII.


I was preaching one day to mother and Aunt Merce a sermon after the
manner of Mr. Boold, of Barmouth, taking the sofa for a desk, and
for my text "Like David's Harp of solemn sound," and had attracted