"I wish you would scold Kitty," said Mrs. Keith to Mollie in the course of the evening, "she is so very frivolous."
"O auntie, what a perfect shame!" said Kitty. "I frivolous! If frivolous means being intensely affectionate, I am that, but I don't think I am frivolous in any other sense of the word."
"I am not complaining of you, Kitty—you suit me perfectly; but you are just a dear little gay butterfly flitting about from flower to flower, always sipping the sweets and enjoying life to the utmost."
"Oh, I do enjoy life," said Kitty; "it is perfectly heavenly even to be alive!"
"Whereas Mollie," continued Mrs. Keith, "takes life, this very same life, Kitty, in a totally different way."
"Kitty and I were always different," replied Mollie. "What suits one doesn't suit the other. I should be sick of being a butterfly and just sipping the sweets out of the flowers. Such a life would be absolute misery to me. Therefore I cannot consider myself in any way praiseworthy for adopting another."
Mrs. Keith uttered a quick sigh.
"There are moments when life is serious to us all," she said gravely. "Hark! what are they crying in the street?"