She showed herself then so winning and gracious and altogether
magical to the little girl that Sylvia forgot the uncomfortableness
which always happened when her aunt and her father were together. As
they came to be on more intimate terms, Sylvia was told a great many
details about Aunt Victoria's present and past life, in the form of
stories, especially about that early part of it which had been spent
with her brother. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took pains to talk to Sylvia
about her father as he had been when he was a brilliant dashing youth
in Paris at school, or as the acknowledged social leader of his class
in the famous Eastern college. "You see, Sylvia," she explained,
"having no father or mother or any near relatives, we saw more of
each other than a good many brothers and sisters do. We had nobody
else--except old Cousin Ellen, who kept house for us in the summers
in Lydford and traveled around with us," Lydford was another topic on
which, although it was already very familiar to her from her mother's
reminiscences of her childhood in Vermont, Aunt Victoria shed much
light for Sylvia. Aunt Victoria's Lydford was so different from
Mother's, it seemed scarcely possible they could be the same place.
Mother's talk was all about the mountains, the sunny upland pastures,
rocky and steep, such a contrast to the rich, level stretches of
country about La Chance; about the excursions through these slopes
of the mountains every afternoon, accompanied by a marvelously
intelligent collie dog, who helped find the cows; about the orchard
full of old trees more climbable than any others which have grown
since the world began; about the attic full of drying popcorn and
old hair-trunks and dusty files of the New York _Tribune_; about the
pantry with its cookie-jar, and the "back room" with its churn and
cheese-press.
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