Amelia rose with the air of a martyr, threw the scarf on her arm, and carrying her bonnet by one string, went slowly up-stairs. When they came down together, my Aunt Kezia said to Fanny,-- "My dear, you had better take a shorter walk another time." "We have not had a long one, Aunt," said Fanny, looking surprised. "We only went up by the Scar, and back by Ellen Water." "I thought you had been much farther than that," says my Aunt Kezia, in her dry way. "Poor Emily [Note 1.] seemed so tired she could not get up-stairs." Fanny stared, and Amelia gave a faint laugh. My Aunt Kezia said no more, but went on running tucks: and Amelia joined in the conversation between Cecilia and Mr Parmenter. I hardly listened, for I was trying the new knitting stitch which Flora taught me, and it is rather a difficult one, so that it took all my mind: but all at once I heard Amelia say,-- "The beauty of self-sacrifice!" My Aunt Kezia lapped up the petticoat in which she was running the tucks, laid it on her knee, folded her hands on it, and looked full at Amelia. "Will you please, Miss Emily Bracewell, to tell me what you mean?" "Mean, Aunt?" "Yes, my dear, mean." "How can the spirit of that sweet poetical creature," murmured Fanny, behind me, "be made plain to such a mere thing of fact as my Aunt Kezia?" "Well," said Amelia, in a rather puzzled tone, "I mean--I mean--the beauty of self-sacrifice. I do not see how else to put it." "And what makes it beautiful, think you?" said my Aunt Kezia. "It is beautiful in itself," said Amelia. "It is the fairest thing in the moral world. We see it in all the analogies of creation." "My dear Emily," said my Aunt Kezia, "you may have learned Latin and Greek, but I have not. I will trouble you to speak plain, if you please. I am a plain English woman, who knows more about making shirts and salting butter than about moral worlds and the analogies of creation. Please to explain yourself--if you understand what you are talking about. If you don't, of course I wouldn't wish it." "Well, a comparison, then," answered Amelia, in a slightly peevish tone. "That will do," said my Aunt Kezia. "I know what a comparison is. Well, let us hear it." "Do we not see," continued Amelia, with kindling eyes, "the beauty of self-sacrifice in all things? In the patriot daring death for his country, in the mother careless of herself, that she may save her child, in the physician braving all risks at the bedside of his patient? Nay, even in the lower world, when we mark how the insect dies in laying her eggs, and see the fresh flowers of the spring arise from the ashes of the withered blossoms of autumn, can we doubt the loveliness of self-sacrifice?" "How beautiful!" murmured Fanny. "Do listen, Cary." "I am listening," I said. "Charming, Madam!" said Mr Parmenter, stroking his mustachio. "Undoubtedly, all these are lessons to those who have eyes to see."