mark.

"I could not understand what she was reading," said my Aunt Gary.

"Nor anybody else," said Preston. "How are you going to give
expression, when there is nothing to express?"

"That is where you feel the difference between a good reader and one
who is not trained," said my governess. "I presume Daisy has never
been trained."

"No, not in anything," said my aunt. "I dare say she wants a good deal
of it."

"We will try," said Miss Pinshon.

It all comes back to me as I write, that beginning of my Magnolia
life. I remember how dazed and disheartened I sat at the tea-table,
yet letting nobody see it; how Preston made violent efforts to change
the character of the evening; and did keep up a stir that at another
time would have amused me. And when I was dismissed to bed, Preston
came after me to the upper gallery and almost broke up my power of
keeping quiet. He gathered me in his arms, kissed me and lamented me,
and denounced ferocious threats against "Medusa;" while I in vain
tried to stop him. He would not be sent away, till he had come into my
room and seen that the fire was burning and the room warm, and
Margaret ready for me.

With Margaret there was also an old coloured woman, dark and wrinkled,
my faithful old friend Mammy Theresa! but indeed I could scarcely see
her just then, for my eyes were full of big tears when Preston left
me; and I had to stand still before the fire for some minutes before
I could fight down the fresh tears that were welling up and let those
which veiled my eyesight scatter away. I was conscious how silently
the two women waited upon me. I had a sense even then of the sympathy
they were giving. I knew they served me with a respect which would
have done for an Eastern princess; but I said nothing hardly, nor
they, that night.

If the tears came when I was alone, so did sleep too at last; and I
waked up the next morning a little revived. It was a cool morning, and
my eyes opened to see Margaret on her knees making my fire. Two good
oak sticks were on the fire dogs, and a heap of light wood on the
floor. I watched her piling and preparing, and then kindling the wood
with a splinter of light wood which she lit in the candle. It was all
very strange to me. The bare painted and varnished floor; the rugs
laid down here and there; the old cupboards in the wall; the unwonted
furniture. It did not feel like home. I lay still, until the fire
blazed up and Margaret rose to her feet, and