Those last words gave me a bitter pang. This odd girl, who seemed to have some good in her, spoke them, as I thought, with exultation, or at any rate without any sign of sorrow. Her justice, like her mother’s, stopped at home. “If I have done you any good,” I said, with faint hopes of getting some little myself, “do promise me one thing; I am sure you will. Try to be kind to Miss Fairthorn, and lighten some little of the burden she has to bear.” “Oh, you don’t know her,” she answered, with a laugh. “You think she is wonderful, I dare say. I can tell you Miss Kitty has a temper of her own. She is awfully provoking, and she won’t be pitied. I believe she hates Frizzy and me, just because we are our mother’s daughters. If you ever marry her, you had better look out. However, I will bear with her, as far as human nature can. And now I will say ‘Good-night.’” She gave me her hand, which I did not expect; and I saw that she was rather a pretty girl which I had not noticed in the room. She had fine dark eyes, and her voice was much softer than that of her sister; and, it seemed to me that she might come to good, if she got among good people, and away from her terrible mother. CHAPTER XIX. DOE DEM. ROE. WHEN I gave Uncle Corny, as I was bound to do, a full account of that day’s work, he was mightily pleased, and clapped me on the back for having spoken so plainly to that haughty woman. “But now you must make up your mind,” he said, “to have the door slammed in your face, if ever you attempt to get a glimpse of your sweetheart there. Poor thing, what a time of it she will have! What puts my back up is to think that her own father lets her be knocked about like that. She never tells him, you think, because it would only get him into trouble, and do her no good. Well, she is a noble girl, if that is the case. But he must know how she is treated, as I told you, in fifty other ways,—badly dressed, half starved, or at any rate fed on rice and suet-pudding, and kept in the schoolroom away from the others. How was she dressed now? What clothes had she on?” I answered that I really did not know; and this was the truth, though I blamed myself for it. When first she began to be so much to me, I had noticed how neat and becoming her cloak was, and her hat, and a little tender muff, which held a still tenderer pair of hands. But now that she was all the world to me, and more, I seemed to have no sense of her apparel, but to be filled with herself alone, as if her existence came into mine. I did not tell him that because he would have cried “Stuff!”