"I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish you
had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods
like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than
she."
"Why?" said her amazed father.
"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles.
I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools
you set your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had
stayed at home I should have married--" She closed up her mouth
suddenly and was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying.
Melbury was much grieved. "What, and would you like to have grown up
as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more chance of
seeing good life than we have here?"
"Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of,
and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the
misery of those January days when I had got back to school, and left
you all here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear
it. And I was always a little despised by the other girls at school,
because they knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so
good a station as theirs."
Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and
intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he
should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have
helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her to him according
to his original plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of
those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, and a
severe tax upon his purse.
"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If you don't
like to go to her I don't wish to force you."
And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this
perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the
fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his
drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He spent a week and more
thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now
and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand.