‘But didn’t you want to feel like a lady?’
‘I don’t think I felt otherwise, Maria.’
‘Like a grown-up lady, like mamma and my sisters?’
‘O examples!’ cried Bertha. ‘No wonder Maria thinks doing nothing the great thing to grow up for. But, Phœbe, how could you be so stupid as to go and do all this heap? You might as well have stayed at home.’
‘Miss Fennimore desired me!’
‘The very reason why I’d have read stories, and made pictures out of them, just to feel myself beyond her talons.’
‘Talents, not talons,’ said Maria. ‘Cats have talons, people have talents.’
‘Sometimes both, sometimes neither,’ observed Bertha. ‘No explanation, Phœbe; what’s the use? I want to know if Owen Sandbrook didn’t call you little Miss Precision?’
‘Something like it.’