weather be what it
might; "and," added Rose 'when the wind blows hard I am positively
obliged to hold on to the sheets to keep myself in bed!"

"A Mount Holyoke freak," said Mrs. Lincoln. "I wish to mercy neither
of you had ever gone there."

Rose answered by a low cough, which her mother did not hear, or at
least did not notice. Jenny, who loved the country and the country
people, was not much pleased with her mother's plan. But for once Mrs.
Lincoln was determined, and after stealing one more sled-ride down the
long hill, and bidding farewell to the old desk in the school-house,
sacred for the name carved three years before with Billy Bender's
jack-knife, Jenny went back with her mother to Boston, leaving Rose to
droop and fade in the hot, unwholesome atmosphere of Miss Hinton's
school-room.

Not long after Jenny's return to the city, she wrote to Mary an
amusing account of her mother's reason for removing her from Chicopee.
"But on the whole, I am glad to be at home," said she, "for I see
Billy Bender almost every day. I first met him coming down Washington
Street, and he walked with me clear to our gate. Ida Selden had a
party last week, and owing to George Moreland's influence, Billy was
there. He was very attentive to me, though Henry says 'twas right the
other way. But it wasn't. I didn't ask him to go out to supper with
me. I only told him I'd introduce him to somebody who would go, and he
immediately offered me his arm. Oh, how mother scolded, and how angry
she got when she asked me if I wasn't ashamed, and I told her I
wasn't!

"Billy doesn't appear just as he used to. Seems as though something
troubled him; and what is very strange, he never speaks of you, unless
I do first. You've no idea how handsome he is. To be sure, he hasn't
the air of George Moreland, and doesn't dress as elegantly, but I
think he's finer looking. Ever so many girls at Ida's party asked who
he was, and said 'twas a pity he wasn't rich, but that wouldn't make
any difference with me,--I'd have him just as soon as though he was
wealthy.

"How mother would go on if she should see this! But I don't care,--I
like Billy Bender, and I can't help it, and _entre nous_, I believe he
likes me better than he did! But I must stop now, for Lizzie Upton has
called for me to go with her and see a poor blind woman in one of the
back alleys."

From this extract it will be seen that Jenny, though seventeen years
of age, was the same open-hearted,