Mrs. Milray was not wholly sorry to have her go; she was going herself
very soon, and Clementina's earlier departure simplified the question of
getting rid of her; but she overwhelmed her with reproaches which
Clementina received with such sweet sincerity that another than Mrs.
Milray might have blamed herself for having abused her ingenuousness.

The Atwells could very well have let the girl walk home, but they sent
her in a buckboard, with one of the stablemen to drive her. The landlord
put her neat bundle under the seat of the buckboard with his own hand.
There was something in the child's bearing, her dignity and her
amiability, which made people offer her, half in fun, and half in
earnest, the deference paid to age and state.

She did not know whether Gregory would try to see her before she went.
She thought he must have known she was going, but since he neither came
to take leave of her, nor sent her any message, she decided that she had
not expected him to do so. About the third week of September she heard
that he had left Middlemount and gone back to college.

She kept at her work in the house and helped her mother, and looked after
the little ones; she followed her father in the woods, in his quest of
stuff for walking sticks, and advised with both concerning the taste of
summer folks in dress and in canes. The winter came, and she read many
books in its long leisure, mostly novels, out of the rector's library. He
had a whole set of Miss Edgeworth, and nearly all of Miss Austen and Miss
Gurney, and he gave of them to Clementina, as the best thing for her mind
as well as her morals; he believed nothing could be better for any one
than these old English novels, which he had nearly forgotten in their
details. She colored the faded English life of the stories afresh from