The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering : $b A novelHolmes, Mary Jane
General
The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering : $b A novel
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction -- 19th century
“I do like it some, I suppose, only I get so tired. I like to ride, I
like to skate, I like to shop, and all that, but oh, you don’t know how
I want to go home to mother and Helen. I have not seen them for so long;
but I am going in the spring—going in May. How many days are there in
March and April? Sixty-one,” she continued; “then I may safely say that
in eighty days I shall see mother, and all the dear old places. It is
not a grand home like this. You, Bell, might laugh at it; Juno would, I
am sure, but you do not know how dear it is to me, or how I long for a
sight of the huckleberry hills and the rocks where Helen and I used to
play.”
Just then Will called to say the carriage was waiting, and Katy was
driven away, while I sat thinking of her, and the devoted love with
which she clings to her home and friends, wondering if it were the
kindest thing which could have been done, transplanting her to our
atmosphere, so different from her own.
_March 1st._—As it was in the winter, so it is now; Mrs. Wilford Cameron
is the rage—the bright star of society, which quotes and pets and
flatters, and even laughs at her by turns; and Wilford, though still
watchful, lest she should do something _outré_, is very proud of her,
insisting upon her accepting invitations, sometimes two for one evening,
until the child is absolutely worn out, and said to me once when I told
her how well she was looking and how pretty her dress was, “Yes, pretty
enough, but I am so tired. If I could lie down on mother’s bed, in a
shilling calico, just as I used to do!”
Mother’s bed seems at present to be the height of her ambition—the thing
she most desires; and as Juno fancies it must be the _feathers_ she is
sighing for, she wickedly suggests that Wilford either buy a feather bed
for his wife, or else send to Aunty Betsy for the one which was to be
Katy’s setting out! They go to housekeeping in May, and on Madison
Square, too. I think Wilford would quite as soon remain with us, for he
does not fancy change; but Katy wants a home of her own, and I never saw
anything more absolutely beautiful than her face when father said to
Wilford that No.—— Madison Square was for sale, advising him to secure
it. But when mother intimated that there was no necessity for the two
families to separate at present—that Katy was too young to have the
charge of a house—there came into her eyes a look of such distress that
it went straight to father’s heart, and calling her to him, he said,
“Tell me, sunbeam, what is your choice—to stay with us, or have a home
of your own?”
Katy was very white, and her voice trembled as she replied,
“You have been kind to me here, and it is very pleasant; but I guess—I
think—I’m sure—I should like the housekeeping best. I am not so young
either. Nineteen in July, and when I go home next month I can learn so
much of Aunt Betsy and Aunt Hannah.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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