"I had a governess, a learned lady, who taught me in person the picturesqueness of grumpiness. Her temper was ever perfect, because she was never in the wrong, but I being so, she was grumpy. She carried my iniquity under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was a trying child."
Laetitia said, laughing: "I can believe it!"
"Yet I liked her and she liked me: we were a kind of foreground and background: she threw me into relief and I was an apology for her existence."
"You picture her to me."
"She says of me now that I am the only creature she has loved. Who knows that I may not come to say the same of her?"
"You would plague her and puzzle her still."
"Have I plagued and puzzled Mr. Whitford?"
"He reminds you of her?"
"You said you had her picture."
"Ah! do not laugh at him. He is a true friend."