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Why I did not make myself immediately ill, with my night's vigils and sorrow, I cannot tell; unless it were that great excitement kept off the effects of chill air and damp. However, the excitement had its own effects, and my eyes were sadly heavy when they opened the next morning to look at Margaret lighting my fire. "Margaret," I said, "shut Miss Pinshon's door, will you?"

I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy, not one, do you hear?" I heard too well. I faced round upon him and begged him to remember that it was my mother I must obey in Miss Pinshon's orders; and said that he must not talk to me.

Miss Pinshon's voice startled me. "Daisy, where are your thoughts?" I hastily brought my eyes and wits home and answered, "Out upon the lawn, ma'am." "Do you find the multiplication table there?" It was so needless to answer! I was mute. I would have come to the rash conclusion that nature and mathematics had nothing to do with each other.

"Be watchful" were the first words that met me. Ay, I was sure I would need it; but how was a watch to be kept up, if I could never be alone to take counsel with myself? I did not see it; this was another matter from Miss Pinshon's unlocked door. After all, that door had not greatly troubled me; my room had not been of late often invaded. Now I had no room.

From there my mind went off to the people around me at Magnolia; were there some to be taught here perhaps? and could I get at them? and was there no other way could it be there was no other way but by my weak little voice through which some of them were ever to learn about my dear Saviour? I had got very far from mathematics, and my book fell. I heard Miss Pinshon's voice.

And I had not Darry and my pony, which indeed, the latter, had been of small use to me this year; and I had not my band of friends on the Sunday evening; and even my own maid Margaret aunt Gary had chosen to leave behind. Miss Pinshon's reign was absolute. I think some of the Medusa properties Preston used to talk about must have had their effect upon me at this time.

Miss Pinshon chose one of the two that opened into each other; and my only comfort was the fact that my own room had two doors and I was not obliged to go through Miss Pinshon's to get to it. Just as this business was settled, Preston called me out into the gallery and asked me to go for a walk.

But my education that winter was quite in another line. I could not bear much arithmetic. Bending over a desk did not agree with me. Reading aloud to Miss Pinshon never lasted for more than a little while at a time. So it comes, that my remembrance of that winter is not filled with school exercises, and that Miss Pinshon's figure plays but a subordinate part in its pictures.

My mother would go with him. I think never in my life my spirits sank lower than they did when I heard this news. I was not strong nor very well, which might have been in part the reason. And I was dull-hearted to the last degree under the influence of Miss Pinshon's system of management. There was no power of reaction in me.

I scarcely heeded one or the other; but I did feel Miss Pinshon's taking my hand and leading me home all the rest of the way. It was not that I wanted to talk to Preston, for I was not ready to talk to him; but this holding me like a little child was excessively distasteful to my habit of freedom.