Ann Packet looked fixedly for awhile at Mattie, and then burst forth:
"Let him! Pr'aps he's fitter for her than you, if he's weak-minded and babyish, and can't tell what's best for him. Let him pack up his traps and go—you can do without him." Ann Packet, carried away by the feelings of the moment, went on, in a higher key. "You're too good for him, and the likes of him, and ain't agoing begging because a pink-faced gal is set afore ye. You're young yet. You've people to love you, and take care on you—you shan't be lonely, and you shall get over all your disappintments and be as happy as the day is long. It isn't for you, Mattie, to fret yourself to death because a little trouble's come, and you can't shake it off yet—you'll show 'em that you've never been a fretting, and that you've got a consolation yet, that their goings on can't take away!"
"Well, Ann, where would be your consolation?" asked Mattie.
"Where you taught me to find it, big words and all—where you will never lose it, Mattie, good as you've growed."
There was something touching in the manner with which Ann Packet snatched from the toilet-table the little Bible that always had a place there, and laid it suddenly in Mattie's lap. Mattie shivered, even cowered somewhat at the demonstration; it had been unexpected as that interview, and for the first time in her life Ann Packet took the vantage ground, and Mattie looked up to her.
"When you turned good, Mattie," said Ann, "you turned to that—you read it to me, and tried to make me read it, telling me that there was comfort to be found there for my loneliness. I found it—so will you, child. You can't miss what you found me!"
"It does not follow," murmured Mattie.
"Yes it does," said Ann, who would not abate one jot of her assertions; "with you, who ain't like tother people, and who never was. You liked tother people better than yourself, and so got posed upon—but you're all the better for it—lor bless you!—you'll see that in there. And, Mattie, there's your father and me, still—we shan't drop away from you. The likes of me," she added, after a little more reflection, "isn't much to brag on, but you'll find me allus true—that's something."
"Everything!"
"You ain't like me, with no one to look to—with no one but you in all the world that would do me a good turn if I wished it ever so. With you there isn't one but'd go anywhere to help you, knowing what a contented soul you are. And when it comes to you, allus so cheerful, getting mopish—you, who finds somethin' good in things that others fret at, and makes us warm and comfurble instead o' shivering with fright—why, it's sixes and sevens all a topsy turvy anyhow, and no one to look up to nowhere!"