"After all, Miss Fortune," said Alice soberly, "it is not what we _do_ for people that makes them love us; or at least, everything depends on the way things are done. A look of love, a word of kindness, goes further towards winning the heart than years of service or benefactions mountain-high without them." "Does she say I am unkind to her?" asked Miss Fortune fiercely. "Pardon me," said Alice. "Words on her part are unnecessary. It is easy to see from your own that there is no love lost between you, and I am very sorry it is so." "Love, indeed!" said Miss Fortune, with great indignation. "There never was any to lose, I can assure you. She plagues the very life out of me. Why, she hadn't been here three days before she went off with that girl Nancy Vawse, that I had told her never to go near, and was gone all night. That's the time she got in the brook. And if you'd seen her face when I was scolding her about it! It was like seven thunder-clouds. Much you know about it! I dare say she's very sweet to you; that's the way she is to everybody beside me. They all think she's too good to live, and it just makes me mad!" "She told me herself," said Alice, "of her behaving ill another time about her mother's letter." "Yes, that was another time. I wish you'd seen her." "I believe she saw and felt her fault in that case. Didn't she ask your pardon? She said she would." "Yes," said Miss Fortune dryly, "after a fashion." "Has she had her letter yet?" "No." "How is she to-day?" "Oh, she's well enough--she's sitting up. You can go up and see her." "I will directly," said Alice. "But now, Miss Fortune, I am going to ask a favour of you. Will you do me a great pleasure?" "Certainly, Miss Alice, if I can." "If you think Ellen has been sufficiently punished for her ill-behaviour--if you do not think it right to withhold her letter still--will you let me have the pleasure of giving it to her? I should take it as a great favour to myself." Miss Fortune made no kind of reply to this, but stalked out of the room, and in a few minutes stalked in again with the letter, which she gave to Alice, only saying shortly, "It came to me in a letter from her father." "You are willing she should have it?" said Alice. "Oh yes; do what you like with it."