The Heiress of Mcgregor by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

SIX weeks had passed since the date of our last chapter. The woods around Hemlock Valley were beginning to put on here and there a dash of red or a shade of brown, and the autumn-blossoming flowers in the gardens were in all their glory; the boys were making daily excursions to the woods to bring home ferns and mosses for the parlour windows. All the "Agricultural Transactions," "Patent-office Reports," and other books of that nature were filled with gay autumn leaves in process of pressing (the only use, by the way, that I ever found for such volumes), and Mrs. Andrews complained pathetically that she could not open an atlas or a dictionary without being covered by a shower of falling foliage.

Marion McGregor was leaning on the gate in front of the house, looking over the fields toward the pasture, and feeling very disconsolate. She was more utterly discontented and unhappy than she had ever been even at Holford, and that was saying a great deal.