"There it is, child; you want to dress up your poor perishing body to look pretty—that's the thing!"
"To be sure I do. Why shouldn't I? I mean to look as pretty as I can, as long as I live."
"You seem to have quite a conceit of your beauty!" said Aunt Nesbit.
"Well, I know I am pretty. I'm not going to pretend I don't. I like my own looks, now, that's a fact. I'm not like one of your Greek statues, I know. I'm not wonderfully handsome, nor likely to set the world on fire with my beauty. I'm just a pretty little thing; and I like flowers and laces, and all of those things; and I mean to like them, and I don't think there'll be a bit of religion in my not liking them; and as for all that disagreeable stuff about the worms, that you are always telling me, I don't think it does me a particle of good. And, if religion is going to make me so poky, I shall put it off as long I can."
"I used to feel just as you do, dear, but I've seen the folly of it!"
"If I've got to lose my love for everything that is bright, everything that is lively, and everything that is pretty, and like to read such horrid stupid books, why, I'd rather be buried, and done with it!"
"That's the opposition of the natural heart, my dear."
The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of a bright, curly-headed mulatto boy, bearing Mrs. Nesbit's daily luncheon.
"Oh, here comes Tomtit," said Nina; "now for a scene. Let's see what he has forgotten, now."