Miss Winn had made a few alterations in the room—softened the aspect of it. She longed to take out the big carved bedstead, but she knew that would never do. She made herself useful in many unobtrusive ways, gardened a little, was neighborly yet reserved.
"I don't know what we would do if she were a gossip," Elizabeth commented.
She broached the subject of the school to Chilian.
"Why, yes," he answered reluctantly. "I suppose she ought to go. She's curiously shy with other children."
"She talks enough about that Nalla, as if they had been like sisters."
"You can notice that she always preserves the distinction, though."
"There's no use bothering with that Latin, Chilian. Next thing it will be French. And she won't know enough figuring to count change. Girls don't need that kind of education."
"But some of them have to be Presidents' wives. And some of them wives to men who have to go abroad. French seems to be quite general among cultivated people."
"It's hardly likely she'll go abroad. And she needs to be like other people. I don't see what you find so entertaining about her. And you couldn't bear children in your room!"
"She isn't any annoyance. Then she is so deft, so dainty. She touches books with the lightest of fingers. She will sit and look at pictures, and it quite surprises me how much she knows about geography."