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," I cried, striking the table with my hand, making Veronica wink, "tell me how to feel and act." "I have no influence with you, nor with Veronica." "Because," said Verry, "we are all so different; but I like you, mother, and all that you do." "Different!" she exclaimed, "children talk to parents about a difference between them." "I never thought about it before." I said, "but _where_ is the family likeness?" Aunt Merce laughed. "There's the Morgesons," I continued, "I hate 'em all." "All?" she echoed; "you are like this new one." "And Grand'ther Warren"--I continued. "Your talk," interrupted Aunt Merce, jumping up and walking about, "is enough to make him rise out of his grave." "I believe," said Veronica, "that Grand'ther Warren nearly crushed you and mother, when girls of our age. Did you know that you had any wants then? or dare to dream anything beside that he laid down for you?" Aunt Merce and mother exchanged glances. "Say, mother, what shall I do?" I asked again. "Do," she answered in a mechanical voice; "read the Bible, and sew more." "Veronica's life is not misspent," she continued, and seeming to forget that Verry was still there. "Why should she find work for her hands when neither you nor I do?" Veronica slipped out of the room; and I sat on the floor beside mother. I loved her in an unsatisfactory way. What could we be to each other? We kissed tenderly; I saw she was saddened by something regarding me, which she could not explain, because she refused to explain me naturally. I thought she wished me to believe she could have no infirmity in common with me--no temptations, no errors--that she must repress all the doubts and longings of her heart for example's sake. There was a weight upon me all that day, a dreary sense of imperfection. When father came home he asked me if I would like to go to Rosville. I answered, "Yes." Mother must travel with me, for he could not leave home. The sooner I went the better. He also thought Veronica should go. She was called and consulted, and, provided Temperance would accompany us to take care of her, she consented. It was all arranged that evening. Temperance said we must wait a week at least, for her corns to be cured, and the plum-colored silk made, which had been shut up in a band-box for three years. We started on our journey one bright morning in June, to go to Boston in a stagecoach, a hundred miles from Surrey, and thence
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