Helen Baker must leave college,
because they need her _at home_,--just think, _need her_! Isn't that
happiness? And Mr. Bradford is so joyful over his new salary, thinks it
is a fortune, and with being able to buy those things for his
mother,--father has sent me more money during the four months I've been
back, so I may feel independent, he says, than the Professor will earn in
a year. Independent? deserted is a better word! I hardly know my own
parents, I find, and they expect nothing from me, even my companionship.
"Before I went away to school, if mamma was ill, I used to carry up her
breakfast, and brush her hair; now she treats me almost like a
stranger,--dislikes my going to her room at odd times. I hardly ever see
her, she is always so busy, and if I beg to be with her, as I did once,
she says I do not understand her duty to society.
"People should not have children and then send them away to school until
they feel like strangers, and their homes drift so far away that they do
not know them when they come back,--and there's poor Carthy out west all
alone, after the plans we made to be together. It is all so different
from what I expected. Why does not father come home, or mother seem to
mind that he stays away? What is the matter, Aunt Lavinia? Is mamma
hiding something, or is the fault all mine?"
Miss Lavinia closed the door, and soothed the excited girl, talking to
her for an hour, and in fact slept on the lounge, and did not return to
her own room until morning.
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