“Ah, you’ll see. But as to her being plain, now I don’t think so. What rosy cheeks she has! and her eyes—why, they’re lovely. And she’s not what I should call lackadaisical, in the least. Why, she’s the busiest little body alive! always doing something for somebody. And then she has talent—a wonderful eye for figure. I think she’s going to make an artist.” “Oh, Kate!” laughs Aunt Sophia, “what remarkable people all your friends are, the younger ones especially. There’s that scapegrace of a boy, my nephew Harry; what do you think of _him_? No doubt you’ll say he’s the pink of propriety. Harry, Harry! come down out of that tree, this minute, and stop tearing about so, or you’ll be all in rags by night!” “What do I think of him? I think he’s just magnificent!” “As black as the ace of spades.” “Yes, he’s tanned up beautifully this summer, and so full of health and spirits, with a heart as big as all out-of-doors.” “If he would only take to books more.” “Oh, books are well enough (I wouldn’t, for the world, speak slightingly of them); but books are not everything. Of what good is all the learning if one hasn’t the life—the strength to put it to use? Ah, those sinewy fists! they remind me of the old Greeks. Bless him!—the young Hercules!—when the work comes for him to do he is going to be strong and able to do it.” “Oh, he has a mission to fulfill, then! What may it be, I wonder? Lassoing wild horses on the pampas?” “Oh, he’s going to do something splendid, by and by, that will make you all proud of him.” “Well, you _are_ encouraging. And there’s that little popinjay, Marie Maross, with her saucy eyes (by the way, I never could make out which they are, gray or black), and her _stringlets_—I can’t conscientiously call them ringlets (I suppose they would have been _wavelets_ if she had only known over night she was coming)—and her white dress as limp as if it hadn’t come fresh from the laundry this very morning. Do look at the grass-stains and mud on it, and half the ruffles on one side torn off! (I don’t see how her mother has any kind of patience with her; but then she’s an easy old shoe.) And her sash awry, and her ribbons flying, and her bracelets rattling, and those half-dozen strings of beads around her neck—” “Oh, not half-a-dozen!” “At any rate, enough to be always jingling wherever she goes, like the old woman in the nursery rhyme: ‘With a ring on her finger and a bell on her toe.’ Well, how are you going to dispose of _her_? Is she to be a second—a sort of feminine Rubenstein, or a Pauline Lucca—or are you going to send her as missionary to the Feejee Islands?”