Is the nature sweet and trustful; is it free from the morbid self-love which calls itself “sensitive feeling” and frets at imaginary offences; is the tendency to be grateful for kindness, yet take kindness meekly, and accept as a benefit what the vain call a due? From dispositions thus blessed, sweet temper will come forth to gladden thee, spontaneous and free. Quick with some, with some slow, word and look emerge out of the heart. Be thy first question, “Is the heart itself generous and tender?” If it be so, self-control comes with deepening affection. Call not that a good heart which, hastening to sting if a fibre be ruffled, cries, “I am no hypocrite.” Accept that excuse, and revenge becomes virtue. But where the heart, if it give the offence, pines till it win back the pardon; if offended itself, bounds forth to forgive, ever longing to soothe, ever grieved if it wound; then be sure that its nobleness will need but few trials of pain in each outbreak to refine and chastise its expression. Fear not then; be but noble thyself, thou art safe! Yet what in childhood is often called, rebukingly, “temper” is but the cordial and puissant vitality which contains all the elements that make temper the sweetest at last. Who amongst us, how wise soever, can construe a child’s heart? who conjecture all the springs that secretly vibrate within, to a touch on the surface of feeling? Each child, but especially the girl-child, would task the whole lore of a sage deep as Shakspeare to distinguish those subtle emotions which we grown folks have outlived. “She has a strong temper,” said the Mayor, when Soppy snatched the doll from his hand a second time, and pouted at him, spoiled child, looking so divinely cross, so petulantly pretty! And how on earth could the Mayor know what associations with that stupid doll made her think it profaned by the touch of a stranger? Was it to her eyes as to his,--mere waxwork and frippery; or a symbol of holy remembrances, of gleams into a fairer world, of “devotion to something afar from the sphere of her sorrow?” Was not the evidence of “strong temper” the very sign of affectionate depth of heart? Poor little Sophy! Hide it again,--safe out of sight, close, inscrutable, unguessed, as childhood’s first treasures of sentiment ever are! CHAPTER XXII.