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Updated: June 28, 2025
Preston turned to leave the room with his candy, and in turning gave me a look of such supreme fun and mischief that at another time I could hardly have helped laughing. But Miss Pinshon was asking me if I understood arithmetic? "I think I know very little about it," I said hesitating. "I can do a sum." "In what?" "On the slate, ma'am." "Yes, but in what?"
I suppose Miss Pinshon herself had never been used to it nor known it; for she did not seem to guess at what was in my mind. But it made my mornings hard to get through. By the afternoon the spirit was so utterly gone out of me and everything, that I took it all in a mechanical stupid way; and only my back's aching made me impatient for the time to end.
I was let alone; and the Sunday evenings in the kitchen, and the bright morning hours in the pine avenues and oak groves, were my refreshment and my pleasure, and my strength. What there was of it; for I had not much strength to boast for many a day. Miss Pinshon tried her favorite recipe whenever she thought she saw a chance, and I did my best with it.
But it was not quick work; and though my patience did not flag again nor my attention fail, the afternoon was well on the way before I was dismissed. I had then permission to do what I liked. Miss Pinshon said she would not go to walk that day; I might follow my own pleasure. I must have been very tired; for it seemed to me there was hardly any pleasure left to follow. I got my flat and went out.
"Yes," my aunt said, somewhat as if it needed an apology; "it was the custom in my father's and grandfather's time; and we always keep it up. I think old customs always should be kept up." "And do you have the same sort of thing on Sundays, for the out-of-door hands?" "What?" said my aunt. It was somewhat more abrupt than polite; but she probably felt that Miss Pinshon was a governess.
Sundays I would have begged to be allowed to stay at home all day and rest; but I knew if I pleaded fatigue my evenings with the people in the kitchen would be immediately cut off; not my drives to church. Miss Pinshon always drove the six miles to Bolingbroke every Sunday morning, and took me with her.
Father and mother and home the delights and the freedoms of those days the carelessness, and the care the blessed joys of that time before I knew Miss Pinshon, or school, and before I was perplexed with the sorrows and the wants of the world, and before I was alone above all, when papa and mamma and I were at home.
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.
He declared I was turning to stone already; he said a great many hard words against my governess; threatened he would write to my father; and when he could not prevail to make me talk, dashed off passionately and left me. I went trembling into my room. But my refuge there was gone. I had fallen upon evil times. My door must not be locked, and Miss Pinshon might come in any minute.
"Because aunt Gary told Miss Pinshon that we have to drive six miles to go to church. Do ask him where they go!" "They don't go anywhere, Daisy," said Preston impatiently; "they don't care a straw about it, either. All the church they care about is when they get together in somebody's house and make a great muss." "Make a muss!" said I.
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