'If I were writing a novel now, and had to draw a picture of home--Holland Mills was its commonplace name--I wonder could I make it all picturesque and interesting? I don't think I could; and yet the long low green and white house was pretty--and the fields, the orchards, the river, were all beautiful to me. I could describe every part of the road between the Mills and the minister's house, Thornton's home--for Thornton's father was our minister, and his mother was our school-madam; but the minister did the most of the teaching. 'My place was beside Thornton on the very first day when aunt Catherine took me to school, and he became my friend and protector, and I his plague and oppressor, from that instant. What patience he had with me! and how naughty I was! I was a pretty child, and always very trim and neat: aunt Catherine never would have tolerated any untidiness or disorderly ways, and I regarded Thornton's plain features, much too large for his narrow face, and his untidy clothes, worn anyhow and much patched and darned, with great contempt. But Thornton soon made me ashamed of such a feeling. He helped me with my tasks, he even did some of them for me; he taught me to feel a moderate degree of interest in the subjects of our studies, in which he repeatedly shot far beyond me; he got me out of scrapes, and kept me out of mischief; he defended me against my adversaries, fought and punished them; he saved the life of my little dog, when it was drowning in the millstream, at the risk of his own (poor little Taffy! she is stuffed and under a glass case in Alston's study; and that is more of Alston's kindness to me, for I am sure he does not like her, and she _isn't_ naturally done); he stole apples for me, and he lent me his own skates in the ice-season, when aunt Catherine would not hear of my having a pair. 'I put these foolish-sounding trifling things down because I want to bring back to myself the assurance that Thornton was always like a brother to me. 'The first thing that I can remember as troubling the busy tranquillity of my school life was my coming to understand why aunt Catherine and papa always had so much to talk about, and why the talking never did them any good. I was growing up into a staid little person, as Alston says I am now, when the word "difficulties" began to be familiar to me. It never has the sad and hopeless meaning in America that it has in the old countries of Europe, I am told; but "difficulties" are not easy or pleasant anywhere, and papa was not a man to bear them well. He gave way very much, and I used to tell Thornton about it, and he and I used to consult together and discuss what could be done.