Juniper, indeed,
excepted. Once they went to a quilting at Squire Dennison's;
the house was spotlessly neat and well-ordered; the people all
kind; but Ellen thought they did not seem to know how to be
pleasant. Dan Dennison alone had no stiffness about him. Miss
Fortune remarked with pride, that even in this family of
pretension, as she thought it, the refreshments could bear no
comparison with hers. Once they were invited to tea at the
Lawsons'; but Ellen told Alice, with much apparent disgust,
that she never wanted to go again. Mrs. Van Brunt she saw
often. To Thirlwall, Miss Fortune never went.
Twice in the course of the summer Ellen had a very great
pleasure in the company of little Ellen Chauncey. Once Miss
Sophia brought her, and once her mother; and the last time
they made a visit of two weeks. On both occasions Ellen was
sent for to the parsonage, and kept while they stayed; and the
pleasure that she and her little friend had together cannot be
told. It was unmixed now. Rambling about through the woods and
over the fields, no matter where, it was all enchanting;
helping Alice garden; helping Thomas make hay, and the
mischief they did his haycocks by tumbling upon them, and the
patience with which he bore it; the looking for eggs; the
helping Margery to churn, and the helping each other to set
tables; the pleasant mornings, and pleasant evenings, and
pleasant mid-days — it cannot be told.
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