“Agnes, come here, and hold up your pinafore!” and Agnes trotted up to his side, her pinafore held up very much to receive the morning dole of crumbs for the birds; presently, she came back radiant with the joy of having given the birds a good breakfast, and we had no more sulky fits that day. This went on for a fortnight or so, with fair but not perfect success. Whenever her father or I was present, we caught the emotion before the child was conscious of it, and succeeded in turning her thoughts into some pleasant channel. But poor nurse has had bad hours with Agnes; there would sit the child, pale and silent, for hours together, doing nothing because she liked to do it, but only because she was made. And, once the fit had settled down, thick and steady as a London fog, neither her father nor I could help in the least. Oh, the inconceivable settled cloudiness and irresponsiveness of that sweet child face! Our tactics were at fault. No doubt they helped so far as they went. We managed to secure bright days that might otherwise have been cloudy when we happened to be present at the first rise of the sullen mood. But it seemed impossible to bring about so long an abstinence from sullen fits as would eradicate the _habit_. We pictured to ourselves the dreary life that lay before our pretty little girl; the sort of insulation, the distrust of her sweetness, to which even one such sullen fit would give rise; worse, the isolation which accompanies this sort of temper, and the anguish of repentance to follow. And then, I know, madness is often bred of this strong sense of injured personality. It is not a pleasant thing to look an evil in the face. Whether or no “a little knowledge is a dangerous,” certainly, it is a trying thing. If we could only have contented ourselves with, “Oh, she’ll grow out of it by-and-by,” we could have put up with even a daily cloud. But these forecasts of our little girl’s future made the saving of the child at _any_ cost our most anxious care. “I’ll tell you what, Mary; we must strike out a new line. In a general way, I do believe it’s best to deal with a child’s faults without making him aware that he has them. It fills the little beings with a ridiculous sense of importance to have anything belonging to _them_, even a fault. But in this case, I think, we shall have to strike home and deal with _the cause_ at least as much as with _the effects_, and that, chiefly, because we have not effects entirely under our control.” “But, Edward, what if there is no cure? What if this odious temper were _hereditary_--our precious child’s inheritance from those who should have brought her only good?”