Hillcrest was a five hours’ journey from Webster, and to-day Virginia
could look at the countrysides which they passed with a less perturbed
spirit than that with which she had so unsuccessfully tried to watch
them nearly a week before. The visit in Vermont was over, and after
all it had not been so hard. She really loved dear, frank, funny Aunt
Nan very dearly, and she somehow felt sure that Aunt Nan loved her. As
for Grandmother Webster, perhaps she did not love her Wyoming
granddaughter just yet; but, Virginia assured herself, remembering her
grandmother’s warm kiss at parting, she at least did not entirely
disapprove of her. After all, it was hard to have one’s only
granddaughter from Wyoming—especially hard when one could not
understand that Wyoming was not a wilderness.
But as she reviewed the five days, she could not find any glaring
improprieties or mistakes, except perhaps shocking poor Dr. Baxter.
But even then, she had only told the truth. After all, manners are
quite the same in Wyoming as in Vermont, she thought. To be sure her
_a’s_ were hardly broad to suit Grandmother Webster, and her _r’s_
quite too prominent. In Vermont there were no _r’s_—that is, where
they belonged. If used at all, they were hinged in the funniest sort
of way to the ends of words. Virginia laughed as she remembered how
grandmother had called her “Virginiar” and the maid “Emmar,” but
pronounced Webster, which possessed a real _r_ at the end “Websta.”
She wondered if the girls at St. Helen’s would all speak like that. If
so, they would find her funny, indeed; but she did not mind.
New England was lovely. She did not wonder that her mother had always
talked so much of its fir-covered hills, its rocky, sunny pastures,
its little white-churched villages nestling in the hollows, its
crimson maples, its goldenrod and asters. And this very journey to St.
Helen’s, which she was now taking, her own mother years before had
taken many, many times in going back and forth to school before and
after vacations Quick tears filled her eyes as she remembered. Her
mother would be glad if she knew her little daughter was on her way to
her mother’s old school. Perhaps she did know after all. And with this
thought came a resolve to be an honor and a credit to them all.
At one of the larger stations where the train stopped longer than
usual was gathered on the platform a merry group of persons, saying
good-by to two girls, who were apparently going to take the train.
Perhaps they also were going to St. Helen’s, thought Virginia, and she
studied the group as closely as politeness would allow.
“Now, Priscilla, do be careful, and don’t get into any more scrapes
this year,” she heard a sweet-voiced, motherly-looking woman say, as
she kissed one of the girls good-by.
“Mother dear, I’m going to be the model of the school, wait and see,”
the girl cried, laughing. “Dorothy is, too, aren’t you, Dot?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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