'Such as you and Norman used to bestow on Shakespeare and Scott, and—the vision of Cocksmoor.'
'Not only used,' said Ethel.
'Yes, it is your soft side,' said Flora; 'it is what answers the purpose of sentiment in people like you. It is what I should have thought living with you would have put into any girl; but Gertrude has a satirical side, and she follows the age.'
'I wish you would tell her so—it is what she especially wants not to do! But the spirit of opposition is not the thing to cause tenderness.'
'No, you must wait for something to bring it out. She is very kind to my poor little Margaret, and I won't ask how she talks of her.'
'Tenderly; oh yes, that she always would do.'
'There, then, Ethel, if she can talk tenderly of Margaret, there can't be much amiss at the root.'
'No; and you don't overwhelm the naughty girl with baby talk.'
'Like our happy, proud young mothers,' sighed Flora; and then letting herself out—'but indeed, Ethel, Margaret is very much improved. She has really begun to wish to be good. I think she is struggling with herself.'
'Something to love tenderly, something to reverence highly.' So meditated Ethel, as she watched her sunny-haired, open-faced Daisy, so unconquerably gay and joyous that she gave the impression of sunshine without shade. There are stages of youth that are in themselves unpleasing, and yet that are nobody's fault, nay, which may have within them seeds of strength. Tom's satire had fostered Daisy's too congenial spirit, and he reaped the consequence in the want of repose and sympathy that were driving him from home, and shutting him up within himself. Would he ever forgive that flippant saying, which Ethel had recollected with shame ever since—shame more for herself than for the child, who probably had forgotten, long ago, her 'shaft at random sent'?