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Updated: June 28, 2025
I think I was wearied out; for I remember no excitement or interest about the journey, which ought to have had so much for me. In a passive state of mind I followed Miss Pinshon from steamer to station; from one train of cars to another; and saw the familiar landscape flit before me as the cars whirled us on.
The women put me to bed, as soon as I would let them; and Margaret whispered an earnest "Do, don't, Miss Daisy, don't say nothin' about the prayer meetin'!" I shook my head; I knew better than to say anything about it. All the better not to betray them, and myself, I shut my eyes, and tried to let my face grow quiet. I had succeeded, I believe, before my Aunt Gary and Miss Pinshon came in.
I was constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves.
Miss Pinshon discussed natural history to me when we were walking not the thing, but the science; she asked me questions in geography when we were eating breakfast, and talked over some puzzle in arithmetic when we were at dinner. I think it was refreshing to her; she liked it; but to me, the sky closed over me in lead colour, one unbroken vault, as I said, when my aunt was away.
At home again, after a while of lying down to rest, I was tried with a beginning of calisthenics. A trial it was to me. The exercises, directed and overseen by Miss Pinshon, seemed to me simply intolerable; a weariness beyond all other weariness. Even the multiplication table I liked better. Miss Pinshon was tired perhaps herself at last. She let me go. It was towards the end of the day.
I was greatly amazed at the whole proceeding. No such ceremony was ever gone through at Melbourne; and certainly nothing had ever given me the notion that my Aunt Gary was any more fond of sacred things than the rest of the family. "An excellent plan," said Miss Pinshon, when we had risen from our knees and the servants had filed off.
Now there was nothing but a string of names and dates to say to Miss Pinshon. And dates were hard to remember, and did not seem to mean anything. But Miss Pinshon's favourite idea was mathematics. It was not my favourite idea; so every day I wandered through a wilderness of figures and signs which were a weariness to my mind and furnished no food for it.
I knew all was right about my ruffle and pin; I never left them carelessly arranged; no fingers but mamma's had ever dared to meddle with them before. But Miss Pinshon arranged the ruffle and the pin, and still holding me, looked in my face with those eyes of hers. I began to feel that they were "heavy." They did not waver. They did not seem to wink, like other eyes.
I studied like a machine, and went and came as Miss Pinshon bade me; all the while brooding by myself and turning over and over in my heart the furrows of thought, which seemed at first to promise no harvest. Yet those furrows never break the soil for nothing. In due time the seed fell; and the fruit of a ripened purpose came to maturity.
Then I sank into a helpless, careless, listless state of body and mind, which was very bad for me; and there was no physician who could minister to me. I went wandering about, mostly out of doors, alone with myself and my sorrow. When I seemed a little stronger than usual, Miss Pinshon tried the multiplication table; and I tried; but the spring of my mind was for the time broken.
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