“Oh, mother, do not urge her to-night. You know how high spirited and resolute she is—and, indeed, indeed, I must think they have been too hard with her—it was cruel to expose her fault before the whole village, her schoolmates and all, and she so proud and sensitive. I wonder it didn’t kill her.” “Have you also become rebellious?” said Mrs. Gray, turning her eyes with steady disapproval on the agitated girl, and marveling within herself at the burst of feeling which she evinced. “You will never, I trust, find me rebellious,” replied Phebe meekly, but weeping all the time. “I know that Malina has faults; who has not? but they are such as harsh treatment will perpetuate, not conquer. She is so kind, so warm-hearted, that you can persuade her to any thing.” “I do not choose to _persuade_ my children,” said the mother, moving forward. “Go seek Malina in the garden, and bring her to me as I desired.” “But I fear that she is not in the garden,” said Phebe, doubtingly. “Then seek her elsewhere, but return soon,” was Mrs. Gray’s reply, and she went down stairs just as Phebe heard the minister knocking at the front door. Phebe tied on her cottage bonnet, and flinging a scarf over her white dress went into the garden. She traversed the flower-beds, searched among the rose thickets, and the lilac trees, calling Malina by name, but all without effect. More than once, when a rustling among the bushes, created by a tame rabbit, reached her ear, she started and listened with an expectation that her call would be answered. After searching through the garden and around the rock spring—a fountain of water that leaped through a hollow at the foot of the hill into a natural basin of solid granite—we saw her come out into the road and look anxiously toward the pine grove on our side of the river, with her hand shading her eyes and her scarf fluttering in the breeze.