“Yes,” cried Mary, the little primrose-girl, “her gown is always trailing. She does not hold it up nicely, like Susan; and with all her fine clothes she never looks half so neat. Mamma says she wishes I may be like Susan, when I grow up to be a great girl, and so do I. I should not like to look conceited as Barbara does, if I was ever so rich.” “Rich or poor,” said Philip, “it does not become a girl to look conceited, much less _bold_, as Barbara did the other day, when she was at her father’s door without a hat upon her head, staring at the strange gentleman who stopped hereabout to let his horse drink. I know what he thought of Bab by his looks, and of Susan, too; for Susan was in her garden, bending down a branch of the laburnum-tree, looking at its yellow flowers, which were just come out; and when the gentleman asked her how many miles it was from Shrewsbury, she answered him so modest!—not bashful, like as if she had never seen nobody before—but just right; and then she pulled on her straw hat, which was fallen back with her looking up at the laburnum, and she went her ways home; and the gentleman says to me, after she was gone, ‘Pray, who is that neat, modest girl—?’ But I wish Susan would come,” cried Philip, interrupting himself. Susan was all this time, as her friend Rose rightly guessed, busy at home. She was detained by her father’s returning later than usual. His supper was ready for him nearly an hour before he came home; and Susan swept up the ashes twice, and twice put on wood to make a cheerful blaze for him; but at last, when he did come in, he took no notice of the blaze or of Susan; and when his wife asked him how he did, he made no answer, but stood with his back to the fire, looking very gloomy. Susan put his supper upon the table, and set his own chair for him; but he pushed away the chair and turned from the table, saying—“I shall eat nothing, child! Why have you such a fire to roast me at this time of the year?” “You said yesterday, father, I thought, that you liked a little cheerful wood fire in the evening; and there was a great shower of hail; your coat is quite wet, we must dry it.” “Take it, then, child,” said he, pulling it off—“I shall soon have no coat to dry—and take my hat, too,” said he, throwing it upon the ground. Susan hung up his hat, put his coat over the back of a chair to dry, and then stood anxiously looking at her mother, who was not well; she had this day fatigued herself with baking; and now, alarmed by her husband’s moody behaviour, she sat down pale and trembling. He threw himself into a chair, folded his arms, and fixed his eyes upon the fire. Susan was the first who ventured to break silence. Happy the father who has such a daughter as Susan!—her unaltered sweetness of temper, and her playful, affectionate caresses, at last somewhat dissipated her father’s melancholy.