"Amity! Oh, she is just the same homely little round-about thing she was at twelve years old. She has not changed at all."
"I did not think she would ever be handsome," remarked Mrs. Paget; "but how is she in other respects. Is she bright?"
"Why, I hardly know what to say. She is a good deal of a reader, and likes steady plodding work like mathematics. She is wonderfully industrious, too—always busy about something. She keeps house now, and really, for one so young, she manages uncommonly well. She is a great deal better at accounts than ever I was, and keeps the house cheerful and pleasant. Then she makes herself useful in the church—teaches in Sunday-school, looks after poor folks, and has a great sewing-class. She is always knitting babies' socks, or a shawl for some old woman, or a comforter for some urchin in her class. That is her style of fancy work."
"She must keep herself pretty busy."
"Oh, she does; but then she likes that sort of thing. To do her justice, she does not make any parade of her deeds, like some people I could name. She never seems to think of herself in connection with them."
"She must have made a very nice woman, by your description, Julia."
"Oh yes, indeed she is. A more dutiful child than she is to father could not be. But she does not care at all for general society, and would rather stay at home and make babies' shoes than go to the best opera that ever was performed. In short, she is a good, honest, homely little body, but she will never make any figure in the world, with all her advantages. She really has no talent—none at all."
"Phil's Pansies."—Frontispiece.
"If you please, Miss, these are yours," said Phil.