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
Bumps; 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 amusement 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.
"There you be," he called out hilariously as he saw her. "Not froze
nuther! You're clear grit! I told your Aunt Betty so, and she said
'seein' was believin'.' As soon as I've thawed my hands a mite, we'll
be joggin'. Dan, that's the hoss, isn't the safest to drive in the
dark."
The early twilight was already dropping down over the hills before
"the mite of thawing" was done, and then wrapped up in an old blanket
shawl Aunt Betty had sent, and covered by two well-worn buffaloes,
they started.
What a ride it was! Marion will never forget how Dan crawled along up
a mountain road, where the path ran between huge snow-drifts, under
beetling rocks that looked as if an avalanche might at any moment fall
from them and crush horse and riders in the sleigh. Sometimes going
under arches of old pine-trees, the arms of which had met and
interlocked, long, long years ago; up steep declivities, where the
horse seemed almost over their heads, down steep declivities, where
they seemed over the horse's head, never meeting any one, only hearing
the dull moaning of the wind among the forest trees, and the louder
moaning of old Dan, as he toiled painfully along.
At last there came an opening that widened until they crossed the
mountain spur, and the little village of Belden lay before them.
Marion saw a church steeple, a few houses, a sawmill, and great spaces
covered with snow. To one of these houses, on the outskirts of the
village, Cousin Abijah drove. The house was a two-storied old
farmhouse, innocent of paint or blind. There was not a fence round, or
a tree near it. On one side was a wooden well-top, with a long arm
holding an iron-bound bucket above it, the arm swinging from a huge
beam, from which, in its turn, swung two large stones, suspended from
the well-sweep by an iron chain. A well-worn foot-path came from a
back door to it, and on this path stood a yellow dog, nose in air, and
tail beating time on a snow-bank.
It was the only living thing to be seen, and Marion's heart sank
within her. She was cold, tired, and homesick; and she saw at once
that around the small front door, before which Cousin Abijah in his
gallantry had stopped, no footstep had left a mark. The snow-bank
reached to the handle, clung to it, and as absolutely refused
entrance, as did a shrill voice which at once made itself heard, but
from whence Marion could not conjecture. It said, however, "Go round
to the back door! What's good enough for me, is good enough for them
that come to see me!"
[Illustration: "I hope I see you well," said a not unkindly voice, as
Marion stepped out of the sleigh.--Page 143. _Miss Ashton's New Pupil._]