Page:The old stone house.djvu/15

gether at home in the old stone house by the lake shore, to spend a summer of freedom away from books and rules. Hugh was to leave her in the autumn to enter upon business life with a cousin in New York city, and Sibyl had been invited to spend w the winter in Washington with a distant relative ; Grace was to enter boarding-school in December, and Tom, — well, no one knew exactly what was to be done with Tom, but that something must be done, and that speedily, everyone was persuaded. There remained only Bessie, " and she is more willful than all the rest," thought Aunt Faith ; " she seems to be without a guiding principle ; she is like a mariner at sea without a compass, sailing wherever the wind carries her. She is good-hearted and unselfish; but when I have said that I have said all. Careless and almost reckless, gay and almost wild, thoughtless and almost frivolous, she seems to grow out of my control day by day and hour by hour. I have tried hard to influence her. I believe she loves me ; but there must be some-