"No, no, nothing, Milly, only I am lonesome, and I want my mother! I haven't got any mother! Dear me!" she said, with a fresh burst.
"Ah, the poor thing!" said Milly, compassionately, sitting down, and fondling Nina in her arms, as if she had been a babe. "Poor chile! Laws, yes; I 'member your ma was a beautiful woman!"
"Yes," said Nina, speaking between her sobs, "the girls at school had mothers. And there was Mary Brooks, she used to read to me her mother's letters, and I used to feel so, all the while, to think nobody wrote such letters to me! And there's Aunt Nesbit—I don't care what they say about her being religious, she is the most selfish, hateful creature I ever did see! I do believe, if I was lying dead and laid out in the next room to her, she would be thinking what she'd get next for dinner!"
"Oh, don't, my poor lamb, don't!" said Milly, compassionately.
"Yes, I will, too! She's always taking it for granted that I'm the greatest sinner on the face of the earth! She don't scold me—she don't care enough about me to scold! She only takes it for granted, in her hateful, quiet way, that I'm going to destruction, and that she can't help it, and don't care! Supposing I'm not good!—what's to make me good? Is it going to make me good for people to sit up so stiff, and tell me they always knew I was a fool, and a flirt, and all that? Milly, I've had dreadful turns of wanting to be good, and I've laid awake nights and cried because I wasn't good. And what makes it worse is, that I think if Ma was alive she could help me. She wasn't like Aunt Nesbit, was she, Milly?"
"No, honey, she wasn't. I'll tell you about your ma some time, honey."
"The worst of it is," said Nina, "when Aunt Nesbit speaks to me in her hateful way, I get angry; then I speak in a way that isn't proper, I know. Oh, if she only would get angry with me back again! or if she'd do anything in the world but stand still, in her still way, telling me she is astonished at me! That's a lie, too; for she never was astonished at anything in her life! She hasn't life enough to be!"
"Ah, Miss Nina, we mustn't spect more of folks than there is in them."
"Expect? I don't expect!"
"Well, bless you, honey, when you knows what folks is, don't let's worry. Ye can't fill a quart-cup out of a thimble, honey, no way you can fix it. There's just whar 'tis. I knowed your ma, and I's knowed Miss Loo, ever since she was a girl. 'Pears like they wan't no more alike than snow is like sugar. Miss Loo, when she was a girl, she was that pretty that everybody was wondering after her; but to de love, dat ar went after your ma. Couldn't tell why it was, honey. 'Peared like Miss Loo wan't techy, nor she wan't one of your bursting-out sort, scolding round. 'Peared like she'd never hurt nobody; and yet our people, they couldn't none of dem bar her. 'Peared like nobody did nothing for her with a will."