"Yes, and what is a-going to become of her?"

"Lud, lud! What's the matter?" asked Mr. Geer, wildly.

"Matter? Why, she'll be seventeen, come fall, and doesn't know a thing."

"O Lud! that all? That a'n't nothin'."

And Mr. Geer settled comfortably down into his arm-chair once more.
He felt decidedly relieved. Visions of smallpox, cholera, and
throat-distemper, the worst evils that he could think of and dread for
his darling, had been conjured up by his wife's words; and when he found
the real state of the case, a great burden, which had suddenly fallen on
his heart, was as suddenly lifted.

"But I tell you it _is_ something," continued Mrs. Geer, energetically.
"Ivy is 'most a woman, and has never been ten miles from home in her
life, and to no school but our little district"----

"And she's as pairk a gal," interrupted Mr. Geer, "as any you'll find in
all the ten miles round, be the other who she will."

"She's well enough in her way," replied Mrs. Geer, in all the humility
of motherly pride; "and so much the more reason why she shouldn't be let
go so. There's Mr. Dingham sending his great logy girls to Miss Porter's
seminary. (I wonder if he expects they'll ever turn out anything.) And
here's our Ivy, bright as a button, and you full well able to maintain
her like a lady, and have done nothing but turn her out to grass all her
life, till she's fairly run wild. I declare it's a shame. She ought to