Well, darling, just tell me what you mean and think. But pray, pray, don’t show any of this to anyone....
God bless and keep my darling Mother.
Farewell, precious.
Your own child,
Sophy.”
“I like the idea of your being confirmed very much,” her Father had written some months before. “God’s blessing be with you. Look to Him and be happy.”
Sophy’s first schoolmistress, Mrs. Teed, took a different view of the matter:
“10th Oct. 1856.
Dearest Sophy,
Your dear Mother tells me you are soon to be confirmed. When I read her letter I thought to myself,—Confirmed!—in what?—in following your own foolish ways? There needs no confirmation in that....