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Updated: May 28, 2025
"You have just tired yourself with mounting that wild thing, Daisy," said my aunt Gary. "Wild!" said Preston. "About as wild as a tame sloth." "I always heard that was very wild indeed," said Miss Pinshon. "The sloth cannot be tamed, can it?" "Being stupid already, I suppose not," said Preston. "Daisy looks pale at any rate," said my aunt. "A little overdone," said Miss Pinshon.
In all my life I had never felt so castaway and desolate. When my father and mother first went from me, I was at least among the places where they had been; June was with me still, and I knew not Miss Pinshon. The journey had had its excitements and its interest.
"Ye want your breakfast bad, Miss Daisy," she remarked then in a subdued tone; and I suppose my looks justified her words. They created some excitement when I went down stairs. My aunt exclaimed; Miss Pinshon inquired; Preston inveighed, at things in general. He wanted to get me by myself, I knew; but he had no chance. Immediately after breakfast Miss Pinshon took possession of me.
Those heavy days were done at last. Margaret was speedy with my packing; a week from the time of Dr. Sandford's coming, I had said my last lesson to Miss Pinshon, read my last reading to my poor people, shaken the last hand-shakings; and we were on the little steamer plying down the Sands river.
"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.
Miss Pinshon, sharing to the full my aunt's discontent, would have got on horseback, I verily believe, to be with me in my rides; but she was no rider. The sound of a horse's four feet always, she confessed, stamped the courage out of her heart.
I did not stop to think of them now, though a waft of the sunny air through the open window brought a violent rush of such images. I tried to shut them out of my head and gave myself wistfully to "three times one is three; three times two is six." Miss Pinshon helped me by closing the window. I thought she might have let so much sweetness as that come into the multiplication table.
So now there was nobody about me who would be easily alarmed. I took the full force of that. "Of course," said Miss Pinshon, "I shall have a careful regard to her health. Nothing can be done without that. I shall take her out regularly to walk with me, and see that she does not expose herself in any way. Study is no hindrance to health; learning has no malevolent effect upon the body.
For a child has as many experiences in her little world as people of fifty years old have in theirs; and to her they are not little experiences. It was not a small trial of mind and body to spend the long mornings in the study over the curious matters Miss Pinshon found for my attention; and after the long morning the shorter afternoon session was unmixed weariness.
My governess would not loose her clasp when we got to the house; but kept fast hold and led me up stairs to my own room. "Do you think that was a proper thing to do, Daisy?" my governess asked when she released me. "What thing, ma'am?" I asked. "To tear about alone on that great grey pony." "Yes, ma'am," I said. "You think it was proper?" said Miss Pinshon, coolly. "Whom had you with you?"
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