“No, indeed, my dear. I don’t think anyone is called on to give their all, and it is very nice and quite right for a little girl to try to make a pretty present to please her mamma. There is plenty of time before you, and I think you will manage to have some share in the very kind action your brothers and sisters are contriving.”
Elizabeth had not forgiven, as she should have done, the being called stingy; it rankled on her feelings far more than those who said the word understood; and she presently went on, “If they knew ever so much, they would only laugh at me, and call it all Bessie’s nonsense. Miss Fosbrook, please, what is affectation?”
“I believe it is pretending to seem what we are not by nature,” said Miss Fosbrook; “putting on manners or feelings that do not come to us of themselves.”
“Then I shall tell them they make me affected,” exclaimed she. “If I like to be quiet and do things prettily, they teaze me for being affected, and I’m forced to be as plain and blunt as their are, and I don’t like it! I wish I was grown up. I wish I was Ida Greville!”
“And why, my dear?”
“Because then things might be pretty,” said Elizabeth. “Everything is so plain and ugly, and one gets so tired of it! Is it silly to like things to be pretty?”
“No, far from it; that is, if we do not sacrifice better things to prettiness.”
Elizabeth looked up with a light in her dark eyes, and said, “Miss Fosbrook, I like you!”
Miss Fosbrook was very much pleased, and kissed her.
She paused a moment, and then said, “Miss Fosbrook, may I ask one question? What is your name? Mamma said it must be Charlotte, because you signed your letter Ch. A. Fosbrook, but your little sister’s letter that you showed us began ‘My dear Bell.’ If it is a secret, indeed I will keep it.”