She went tremblingly. What was to happen to her now? Miss Ashton knew the girls' names who went on the sleigh-ride, and as yet no one had been punished. Could it be about "Storied West Rock"? How Susan by this time hated its very name, and how much she would have given if she had never known it, she could best have told.

"Susan," said Miss Ashton, as with a pale face and downcast eyes the girl stood before her, "when I asked you about your brother's visit to you on the night of the sleigh-ride, you did not tell me of the note he gave you, and you gave to Mamie Smythe. If you had, you would have saved me many troubled hours."

"You did not ask me," said Susan promptly.

"True. Did you know the contents of the note?"

"Mamie asked me to go with them, but I refused. I was afraid you wouldn't like it, and I'd much rather lose a ride any time than displease you;" and Susan, as she said this, looked bravely in Miss Ashton's face.

"That's all," the princ.i.p.al said gravely, and Susan, with a lighter heart than that with which she had entered, left the room; but Miss Ashton thought, as she watched the forced smile on the girl's face, "There's one that can't be trusted; what a pity, for she is not without ability!" Then she remembered the story she had read and praised, and wondered over it.

Two days before the time for the term to close, Miss Ashton received this note:--

OUR DEAR MISS ASHTON,--We, the undersigned, do regret in sackcloth and ashes our serious misconduct in going away at an improper time, and in an improper manner, on a sleigh-ride, without your consent and approval.

We promise, if you will forgive us, and restore us to your trust and affection, that we will never, NEVER be guilty of such a misdemeanor again. That we will try our best faithfully to observe the rules of the school, and endeavor to be good and faithful scholars.

Pray forgive and test us!

MAMIE SMYTHE, HELEN NORRIS, JANE SOMERS, JULIA ABBEY, MYRA PETERS, ETTA SPRING.

Miss Ashton smiled as she read the note. Repentance by the wholesale she had never found very reliable; and in this instance she would have had much more confidence if the girls had come to her, and made a full confession, without waiting to be found out.

It was not until after two sleepless nights that she came to the conclusion to give them further trial; and when she called them to her room, one by one, and had a long and faithful talk with them, sending them from her tenderly penitent, she felt sure her course had been a right one.

Then she made a short speech to the school, went over briefly what had happened, not in the least sparing the impropriety of the stolen ride, but, on account of the repentance and promises from the girls concerned, she had decided not to expel them now, but to give them a chance to redeem the character they had lost. The school clapped her enthusiastically as she closed.

CHAPTER XXI.

ACCEPTING A THANKSGIVING INVITATION.

A week before Thanksgiving, Marion Parke received this note from her Aunt Betty:--

DEAR NIECE,--If you haven't anywhere else to go, and have money to come with, you can take the cars from Boston up here and spend Thanksgiving Day with us at Belden. Your pa used to think a lot of coming here when he went to college--the great pity he ever went. He might have been well-to-do if he had stuck to farming, but he always hankered after an eddication, and he got it, and nothin' else. Your Cousin Abijah will drive over in his cutter and bring you here. Don't have nothing to do with Isaac b.u.mps; he'll charge you twenty-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 feelings. She had heard it for years, and, in truth, was as glad of her vacation as any of her girls.

A journey alone in a new country, with the beauty of the autumn all gone, and the rigors of a New England winter already beginning to show themselves, made Marion, self-reliant as she usually was, not a little timid as she saw the tall academy building lost behind the hills, between which the cars were bearing her on to New Hampshire. A homesick feeling took possession of her, and a dread that she might find Kate Underwood's tableaux a reality when she should reach her old aunt in the mountain-girded farmhouse.

Three hours' ride through a bare and uninteresting country brought her to Belden.

The day was extremely cold here. The snow, which had seemed to her very deep at Montrose, lay piled up in huge drifts, not a fence nor a shrub to be seen. All around were spurs of the White Mountains, white, literally, as she looked up to them, from their base to their summit.

There were great brown trees clinging stiff and frozen to their steep sides; sharp-pointed rocks, raising their great heads here and there from among the trees.

Majestic, awful, solemn they looked to this prairie child, as she stood on the cold platform of the little station gazing up at them.

A voice said behind her, startling her,--

"You'd better come in, marm. It's what we call a terrible cold day for Thanksgiving week. Come in, and warm you."

Marion turned, to see a man in a buffalo overcoat, with whiskers the same color as the fur, eyes that looked the same, a big red nose, a buffalo fur cap pulled well down over his ears, with mittens to match.

He stood in an open door, to which he gave a little push, as if to emphasize his invitation.

Inside the ladies' room of the station a red-hot stove sent out a cheerful welcome. To this the man added stick after stick of dry pine wood, much to Marion's amus.e.m.e.nt and comfort, as she watched him.

"Come from down South?" he asked, after he had convinced himself of the impossibility of crowding in another.

"From the West," said Marion pleasantly.

"You don't say so. You ain't Aunt Betty Parke's niece, now, be ye?"

"I am Marion Parke. Did you know my father?"

"Let me see. Was your father Philip Parke? Phil, we used to call him when he was a boy, the one that would have an eddication, and went a home-missionarying after he got chock-full of books. Aunt Betty, she took it hard. Be he your father?"

"Yes," said Marion, laughing; "he is my father."

"You don't say so, wull, naow, I'm beat. You don't favor him not a mite; you sarten don't. An' you're here to get an eddication too, be ye?"

"Yes; that's what I hope to do. I'm sorry it's so cold here; I should like to walk to my aunt's if it were not."

The man gave a chuckle, which Marion did not at all understand, jammed the stove full of wood again, and remarked as he crowded in the last knot,--

"There's your Cousin Abijah; I know his old cowbells a mile off!

Better get warm!"

Marion was hovering close over the stove when the door opened and Cousin Abijah entered.