“She might better have made open outcry than have left upon his mind
the impression that I had banished her cruelly and unnecessarily. But
I despair of giving you an idea of how provoking she can be. She is a
Chilton, through and through, in feature, manner, and disposition--one
of those 'goody' children, you know! a class of animals that are simply
intolerable to me. She is too precocious and unbaby-like to be in the
least interesting. You should have seen my little Violet to understand
what a constant disappointment Florence is. She was myself in miniature,
and moreover the most witching, prankish, peppery elf that was ever
made. The best trait in Florence's character was her love for her
baby-sister. She gave up everything to her while she was alive, and they
told me that she would not eat, and scarcely slept, for days after her
death. Her father will have it that she is singularly sensitive, and
has marvellous depths of feeling; but if this be so, it is queer I
never found it out. Nobody could help adoring Violet--my sweet, lost,
beautiful angel!”
The hysterical sobs were pumping up the tears now in hot torrents, and
these Mrs. Sutton was fain to assuage by loving arts she would not--but
for the danger of allowing them to flow--have been in the temper to
employ, so full was her heart of yearning pity for the hardly-used
babe, and displeasure at the mother's weak selfishness. It was easier to
forgive and forget Rosa's sins; to lessen, in the retrospect, her worst
faults into foibles, than it would have been to overlook the more venal
failings of one less mercurial, and whose personal fascinations did not
equal hers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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