“Now, Chris, I won’t have anything to say to you, if this is the way you are going to talk,” said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam darted into her eyes. “Really, however, I think she carried things too far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how he was brought up.” “Poor fellow!” said I. “I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there inside of the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round.” “They are all warm-hearted inside,” said Emily. “Would you think she didn’t love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It’s perfectly dreadful sometimes to see how intense she is when anything concerns him; it’s her _principle_ that makes her so cold and quiet.” “And a devilish one it is!” said I. “Chris, you are really growing wicked!” “I use the word seriously, and in good faith,” said I. “Who but the Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and keeping the most-heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key that for the greater part of our lives we get no use of it? Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I’ll venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen islands, knowing as little of each other’s inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of ice,--and all because a cursed principle in the heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to Nature.” “Well,” said Emmy, “sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age, and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been. The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I couldn’t help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes; but her mother looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and said, in her dry voice,-- “‘Jane, what’s the matter?’ “‘O, my head aches dreadfully, and I have pains in all my limbs!’ “I wanted to jump and run to do something for her,--you know at our house we feel that a sick person must be waited on,--but her mother only said, in the same dry way,-- “‘Well, Jane, you’ve probably got a cold; go into the kitchen and make yourself some good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, and go to bed at once’; and Jane meekly departed. “I wanted to spring and do these things for her; but it’s curious, in this house I never dare offer to do anything; and mother looked at me, as she went out, with a significant nod,-- “‘That’s always _my_ way; if any of the children are sick, I never coddle them; it’s best to teach them to make as light of it as possible.’” “Dreadful!” said I.