"What a goose!—what a silly, bad thing I was!" she said. "I hated the idea of you, Mamma. I said I never would like you, whatever you did; and then I just went and fell in love with you!"
"You hid the hatred tolerably well, but I am happy to say that you don't hide the love," said Mrs. Flint, with a smile.
"Hide it? I don't want to! I wonder what did make me behave so? Oh, I know,—it was that absurd book! I wish people wouldn't write such things, Mamma. When I'm quite grown up I mean to write a book myself, and just tell everybody how different it really is, and that the nicest, dearest, best things in the world, and the greatest blessings, are—stepmothers."
"Blessings in disguise," said Mrs. Flint. "Well, Patty, I am afraid I was pretty thoroughly disguised in the beginning; but if you consider me a blessing now, it's all right."
"Oh, it's all just as right as it can be!" said Patty, fervently.
A GRANTED WISH.
THIS is a story about princesses and beggar-girls, hovels and palaces, sweet things and sad things, fullness and scarcity. It is a simple story enough, and mostly true. And as it touches so many and such different extremes of human condition and human experience, it ought by good rights to interest almost everybody; don't you think so?