Capitola's Mother

"Umph! and you to run with the engine!"

"Don't talk about it, uncle; it makes me homesick--every day something glorious to stir one's blood! Here nothing ever happens, hardly! It has been three days since I caught Black Donald; ten days since you blowed up the whole household! Oh! I wish the barns would catch on fire! I wish thieves would break in and steal. I wish Demon's Run would rise to a flood and play the demon for once! Ohyah!--oo!" said Cap, opening her mouth with a yawn wide enough to threaten the dislocation of her jaws.

"Capitola," said the old man, very gravely, "I am getting seriously uneasy about you. I know I am a rough old soldier, quite unfit to educate a young girl, and that Mrs. Condiment can't manage you, and--I'll consult Mr. Goodwin!" he concluded, getting up and putting on his hat, and walking out of the breakfast-room, where this conversation had taken place.

Cap laughed to herself. "I hope it is not a sin. I know I should die of the blues if I couldn't give vent to my feelings and--tease uncle!"

Capitola had scarcely exaggerated her condition. The monotony of her life affected her spirits; the very absence of the necessity of thinking and caring for herself left a dull void in her heart and brain, and as the winter waned the annual spring fever of lassitude and dejection to which mercurial organizations like her own are subject, tended to increase the malady that Mrs. Condiment termed "a lowness of spirits."