Hilda's heart swelled high. She
felt that in another moment the tears must come; and murmuring a word of
excuse, she hastily pushed back her chair and left the room.
An hour after, Hilda was sitting by the window of her own room, looking
listlessly out on the soft summer evening, and listening to the
melancholy cry of the whippoorwill, when she heard voices below. The
farmer was sitting with his pipe in the vine-clad porch just under the
window; and now his wife had joined him, after "redding up" the kitchen,
and giving orders for the next morning to the tidy maidservant.
"Well, Marm Lucy," said Farmer Hartley's gruff, hearty voice, "now thet
you have your fine bird, I sh'd like to know what you're a-goin' to do
with her. She's as pretty as a pictur, but a stuck-up piece as ever I
see. Don't favor her mother, nor father either, as I can see."
"Poor child!" said Dame Hartley, with a sigh, "I fear she will have a
hard time of it before she comes to herself. But I promised Miss Mildred
that I would try my best; and you said you would help me, Jacob."
"So I did, and so I will!" replied the farmer. "But tell me agin, what
was Miss Mildred's idee? I got the giner'l drift of it, but I can't seem
to put it together exactly. I didn't s'pose the gal was _this_ kind,
anyhow."
"She told me," Dame Hartley said, "that this child--her only one, Jacob!
you know what that means--was getting into ways she didn't like. Going
about with other city misses, who cared for nothing but pleasure, and
who flattered and petted her because of her beauty and her pretty, proud
ways (and maybe because of her father's money too; though Miss Mildred
didn't say that), she was getting to think too much of herself, and to
care too much for fine dresses and sweetmeats and idle chatter about
nothing at all.
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