And Maggie, listening to the voices which speak
to her so oft in the autumn wind, the running brook, the opening
flower, and the falling leaf, has learned a lesson different far from
those taught her daily by the prim, stiff governess, who, imported
from England six years ago, has drilled both Theo and Maggie in all
the prescribed rules of high life as practiced in the Old World. She
has taught them how to sit and how to stand, how to eat and how to
drink, as becomes young ladies of Conway blood and birth. And Madam
Conway, through her golden spectacles, looks each day to see some good
from all this teaching come to the bold, dashing, untamable Maggie,
who, spurning birth and blood alike, laughs at form and etiquette as
taught by Mrs. Jeffrey, and, winding her arms around her grandmother's
neck, crumples her rich lace ruffle with a most unladylike hug, and
then bounds away to the stables, pretending not to hear the distressed
Mrs. Jeffrey calling after her not to run, "it is so Yankeefied and
vulgar"; or if she did hear, answering back, "I am a Yankee, native
born, and shall run for all Johnny Bull!"
Greatly horrified at this evidence of total depravity, Mrs. Jeffrey
brushes down her black silk apron and goes back to Theo, her more
tractable pupil; while Maggie, emerging ere long from the stable,
clears the fence with one leap of her high-mettled pony, which John,
the coachman, had bought at an enormous price, of a traveling circus,
on purpose for his young mistress, who complained that grandma's
horses were all too lazy and aristocratic in their movements for her.
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