“Father! are you in earnest? May I go to Lowell?” said Abby; and she raised her bright black eyes to her father’s with a look of exquisite delight.
“Yes, Abby, if you will promise me one thing; and that is, that you will stay a whole year without visiting us, excepting in case of sickness, and that you will stay but one year.”
“I will promise anything, father, if you will only let me go; for I thought you would say that I had better stay at home and pick rocks, and weed the garden, and drop corn, and rake hay; and I do not want to do such work any longer. May I go with the Slater girls next Tuesday, for that is the day they have set for their return?”
“Yes, Abby, if you will remember that you are to stay a year, and only one year.”
Abby retired to rest that night with a heart fluttering with pleasure; for ever since the visit of the Slater girls with new silk dresses, and Navarino bonnets trimmed with flowers, and lace veils, and gauze handkerchiefs, her head had been filled with visions of fine clothes; and she thought if she could only go where she could dress like them, she should be completely happy. She was naturally very fond of dress, and often, while a little girl, had she sat on the grass bank by the roadside watching the stage which went daily by her father’s retired dwelling; and when she saw the gay ribbons and smart shawls, which passed like a bright phantom before her wondering eyes, she had thought that, when older, she too would have such things; and she looked forward to womanhood as to a state in which the chief pleasure must consist in wearing fine clothes.
But as years passed over her, she became aware that this was a source from which she could never derive any enjoyment whilst she remained at home; for her father was neither able nor willing to gratify her in this respect, and she had begun to fear that she must always wear the same brown cambric bonnet, and that the same calico gown would always be her “go-to-meeting dress.” And now what a bright picture had been formed by her ardent and uncultivated imagination! Yes, she would go to Lowell, and earn all that
