"Oh, Miss Chatterwits, you are very handsome!"
"Nobody ever told me that before, Kate," said the old woman.
Then, with the frankness that in later years often caused her to nullify the good impression made by some pretty speech, the child added:
"I mean very handsome all but your face."
What could be a clearer case of "handsome is what handsome does."
VII.
Mrs. Stuart Digby scarcely approved Kate's fondness for Miss Theodora and her friends. Stuart Digby had married two or three years before John, and was living in Paris when the Civil War broke out. His own impulse was to return at once and fight; but as his wife would not consent to this, they remained abroad until Ralph was ten years old and Kate four years younger. Both children at this time spoke French better than English, and Ralph for a long time disliked everything American—like his mother, who, not Boston born, professed little interest in things Bostonian. But in Kate Stuart Digby saw the enthusiasm which had marked his own youth, and he encouraged her in having ideals, only wishing that he had been true to his own.