"Oh what a goose, Mamma!" "No, not a goose, my dear—only an oddity, but a very kind one too—for she desired me to find out whether you really did roll up the whole of the ravelled worsted last night; and if you really persevered till it was finished, I have something to give you from her, but not otherwise. How was it?" "Oh, it's finished, Mamma; ask Nurse; for when I rolled it against her foot last night, she took it for a great black dog." "Well then, I suppose this is yours, Hermione; but, I must say, I never knew a gold thimble earned so easily." Yes, dear little readers, it was a pretty gold thimble, and round the bottom of it there was a rim of white enamel, and on the enamel were gold letters.
"L'industrie ajoute à la beauté."
"Mamma," said Hermione, looking at it in delight, as she found it exactly fitted her finger, "it's lovely; but, do you know, I think the old lady ought to have given it to her granddaughter, Aurora, with such a motto." "My dear, she has had it, she told me, some months in her pocket secretly, for the purpose you mention, but she cannot ever satisfy herself that Aurora has got the spirit of real industry in her, and to bribe her to earn the thimble is not her object, so you see it has accidentally fallen to your share."
And as she said this, Hermione's mother turned round to leave the room; but before she had reached the door, her little girl stopped her—"Mamma, do turn back."
"What is the matter, Hermione?"
"I've something I want to say to you."
"I am all attention, my dear, particularly as your face looks so unusually grave."
"Why, you and my Governess are always calling me good for doing my lessons well, and now you are rewarding me for being good and all that, and I don't see that I am good at all."
"Upon my word this is a very serious matter, Hermione; who or what has put this into your head?"
"I read in a serious book lately, that nobody could be good without practising self-denial; and that, to be really good, one must either do something that one does not like, or give up something that one does; so that I am quite sure I cannot be good and deserve a reward when I do French and music and drawing and work well, because I am so very fond of doing every thing I do do, that every thing is a pleasure to me. And there is no struggle to do what is tiresome and no other wish to give up. The only time when I have to try to be good at all, is when I have to leave off one thing and go to another. That is always a little disagreeable at first, but unfortunately the disagreeableness goes off in a very few minutes, and I like the new employment as well as the last. This is what I was talking about to my Governess when you came, and she laughed so loud I felt quite vexed."