Lady Louisa was tall and weedy; the Squire was tall and robust. Amabel inherited height on both sides, but in face and in character she was more like her father than her mother. Indeed, Lady Louisa would close her eyes, and Lady Craikshaw would put up her gold glass at the child, and they would both cry, “Sadly coarse! _Quite an Ammaby_!” Amabel was not coarse, however; but she had a strength and originality of character that must have come from some bygone generation, if it was inherited. She had a pitying affection for her mother. With her grandmother she lived at daggers drawn. She kept up a pretty successful struggle for her own way in the nursery. She was devoted to her father, when she could get at him, and she poured an almost boundless wealth of affection on every animal that came in her way. An uncle had just given her a Spanish saddle, and her father had promised to buy her a donkey. He had heard of one, and was going to drive to the town to see the owner. With great difficulty Amabel had got permission from her mother and grandmother to go with the Squire in the pony carriage. As she had faithfully promised to “be good,” she submitted to be “well wrapped up,” under her grandmother’s direction, and staggered downstairs in coat, cape, gaiters, comforter, muffatees, and with a Shetland veil over her burning cheeks. She even displayed a needless zeal by carrying a big shawl in a lump in her arms, which she would give up to no one. “No, no!” she cried, as the Squire tried to take it from her. “Lift me in, daddy, lift me in!” The Squire laughed, and obeyed her, saying, “Why, bless my soul, Amabel, I think you grow heavier every day.” Amabel came up crimson from some disposal of the shawl after her own ideas, and her eyes twinkled as he spoke, though her fat cheeks kept their gravity. It was not till they were far on their way that a voice from below the seat cried, “Yap!” “Why, there’s one of the dogs in the carriage,” said the Squire. On which, clinging to one of his arms and caressing him, Amabel confessed, “It’s only the pug, dear daddy. I brought him in under the shawl. I did so want him to have a treat too. And grandmamma is so hard! She hardly thinks I ought to have treats, and she _never_ thinks of treats for the dogs.”