VISIT OF COUSIN ABIJAH.
One afternoon when Marion's lessons had proved unusually difficult,
her room-mates noisy, and obstacles everywhere, it seemed to the
diligent scholar, she answered a tap on her door, to find Etta
Lawrence, the girl who waited in the hall to announce visitors, with a
face full of amusement.
"There's a man down-stairs asking for you, Marion," she said. "He
started to follow me up-stairs; and when I showed him into the parlor,
and told him I would call you, he said,--
"''Tain't no odds, I can jist as well go up; I ain't afraid of stairs,
no way.' I had hard work to make him go into the parlor, and I left
him sitting on the edge of a chair, staring around as if he never had
seen such a room before." Then Etta burst into a merry laugh, in which
all the others but Marion joined: she stood still, looking from one of
the girls to another, as if she couldn't imagine what it all meant.
"You must go down to the parlor," said Dorothy, seeing her
hesitation.
"It's some one from out West," added Sue.
[Illustration: "Did you wish to see me?" asked Marion, looking
inquiringly at the man. Page 69. _Miss Ashton's New Pupil._]
"Perhaps it's your father. Hurry! hurry!" said Gladys, thinking how
she would hurry if her own father had been there.
Thus encouraged, Marion, with heightened color and a rapidly beating
heart, followed Etta down into the parlor, and there, still seated on
the edge of his chair, twirling an old felt hat rapidly round between
two big, red hands, she saw a tall, lean man in a suit of coarse gray
clothes. He had grizzly, iron-gray hair, stubby white whiskers, a
pale-blue eye, a brown face streaked with red.
He sat a little nearer the front edge of his chair as she entered the
room, and waited for her to speak. Evidently he was not prepared for
the kind of Western girl he saw before him.
"Did you wish to see me?" looking inquiringly at him.
"Be you Marion Parke?"
"Yes."
"I am Abijah Jones, your cousin, three times removed; your great-aunt
Betty told me to come out here and make a call on you. She's set on
seeing you at Thanksgiving, and I guess you'd better humor her, for
she took a spite at your father cause he wouldn't farm it, and would
have an education; but she allers kind of favored him more than the
rest of us, and has allers hankered after him. That's why I'm here."
"I'm glad to see you, Cousin Abijah," her Western hospitality coming
to her rescue. "Tell me about my Aunt Betty; she is well, I hope."
Once launched upon the subject of Aunt Betty, between whom and himself
there seemed to have been always a family war, he began to feel
entirely at home in his strange surroundings, his voice rising to a
pitch that resounded through the large room with a peculiar nasal
twang Marion had never heard before. She saw one face after another
make its appearance through the half-open door, and she knew very well
this unusual visitor was giving a great deal of amusement to those who
saw him.
Accustomed to see rude characters at the West as she was, never before
had Marion met one who seemed to her so utterly oblivious of all
common proprieties. She felt sure that if he remained long, the whole
school would be made aware of his peculiar presence; and though she
struggled hard not to be ashamed of him, and to make his call as
pleasant as she could, she was much relieved when she saw Miss Ashton,
who, hearing the strident voice, had come to ascertain its source.
As a New England woman, she at once recognized the type. Marion could
only introduce him as her "Cousin Abijah."
"Three times removed," put in Cousin Abijah, without rising from his
chair, only twirling his hat a little faster in Miss Ashton's stately
presence.
She held her hand out to him cordially, and when he put his great
brown knotty fist within it, a dull red color came slowly into his
seamed face. It was not from any want of self-respect, far from it;
he would not have been abashed if Queen Victoria with all her court
in full dress had entered the room. A real out-and-out country New
Englander knows no peer the wide world over.
Seating herself near him, Miss Ashton soon drew him into a pleasant
conversation, to which Marion listened in much surprise. Even the
man's voice dropped to a lower pitch, and what he said lost the
asperity that had made it so disagreeable. After a few minutes, she
proposed to him to show him around the building, where she was sure he
would find much to interest him, and, what was a very unusual thing
for her to do, she went with him herself. A visitor of this kind was
rare in the academy. She well knew the amusement he would create, and
when they met, as they did often, groups of girls in the corridor, who
stared and smiled at her uncouth companion, she silenced them by a
look, which they could not fail to understand.
Kind Miss Ashton! Marion, as well as Cousin Abijah, will never forget
it.
"Now, Marion," she said, when they returned to the parlor, "I will
excuse you from your next recitation, and you can take your cousin
over to the neighboring city. There is a great deal for him to see
there, and I will give you a note which will admit you to some of the
large factories.
"You can go with him to the station, and see him off in the cars. You
will come home, I know, safely and punctually."
Then, if Cousin Abijah had been the President of the United States she
would not have bidden him a more cordial "good-by."
Marion, strengthened by Miss Ashton's kindness, invited her cousin
before they left to visit her room. She took him through the long
corridors, fully conscious that out of many doors curious eyes were
peeping at them as they passed, and that smiles, sometimes giggles,
followed them. Dorothy and Gladys were both there, and made him
pleasantly welcome. He did not admire the view from the window, as
Marion expected, for he had had far finer mountain views around him
all his life; but he looked curiously at the bric-a-brac and pictures,
of which the room was full, and will carry home with him wonderful
stories of the Western girl's room.
Then came the visit to Pomfret, the inspection of some of the finest
mills, and of the pleasantest parts of the manufacturing city; and
Marion bade this country cousin good-by, with the hearty hope that his
visit had been a pleasant one.