five cents, and tell you it's a
mile and a half from the station to my house, but it's only a
mile, and don't you hear to him, for your Cousin Abijah can't
come until after the milking, and if the cows are fractious, it
may make him belated.

I am your great-aunt,
BETSY PARKE.

Marion had previously received a letter from her father, saying,--

"If you have an invitation from your Aunt Betty to spend
Thanksgiving with her in Belden, by all means accept it. I want
you to see the town in which I was born; there is not a mountain
or a valley there that does not often cover these flat
prairie-lands with their remembered beauty. As they were a part
of my boyish life, so are they a part of my man's; and when you
come home we can talk of them together. I was not born in the
old farmhouse where your aunt now lives, but my father was, and
his father, and his father's father, and your Aunt Betty was a
kind, loving sister to your grandfather long years ago.

"Go, and write me all about the old home, all about the old
aunt, and make her forget, if you can, that I would not be a
farmer."

Before the coming of this letter, Marion had many invitations from her
schoolmates to spend Thanksgiving with them at their homes. Her
room-mates were very urgent that she should go to Rock Cove; and
besides her longing to see that wonderful mysterious thing, the ocean,
she had learned so much of their homes during the weeks they had been
together, that she almost felt as if she knew all the friends there,
and would be sure of a welcome.

But her father's letter left her no choice, and a few cordial lines of
acceptance went from her to her Aunt Betty by the next mail. Of this
decision Miss Ashton heartily approved.

And now began in the school the pleasant bustle which precedes this
holiday vacation. Recitations were gone through by the hardest. Meals
were eaten in indigestible haste; devotional exercises were filled
with "wandering thoughts and worldly affections."

All through the long corridors and out from the open doors came
crowded, eager words of inquiry and consultation. One would have
thought who heard them, that these girls had been close prisoners,
breaking away from a hard, dull life, instead of what most of them
really were, happy girls bound for a frolic.

Miss Ashton heard it all without the least injury to her