"Oh! sober!" cried Ellen Chauncey; "that is because you don't know her, Uncle Howard. She is the cheerfullest, happiest girl that I ever saw always."
"Except Ellen Chauncey always," said her uncle.
"She is a singular child," said Mrs. Gillespie. "She is grave, certainly, but she don't look moped at all, and I should think she would be, to death."
"There's not a bit of moping about her," said Miss Sophia. "She can laugh and smile as well as anybody; though she has sometimes that peculiar grave look of the eyes that would make a stranger doubt it. I think John Humphreys has infected; he has something of the same look himself."
"I am not sure whether it is the eyes or the mouth, Sophia," said Mr. Howard.
"It is both," said Miss Sophia. "Did you ever see the eyes look one way and the mouth another?"
"And besides," said Ellen Chauncey, "she has reason to look sober, I am sure."
"She is a fascinating child," said Mrs. Gillespie. "I cannot comprehend where she gets the manner she has. I never saw a more perfectly polite child, and there she has been for months, with nobody to speak to her but two gentlemen and the servants. It is natural to her, I suppose; she can have nobody to teach her."
"I am not so sure as to that," said Miss Sophia; "but I have noticed the same thing often. Did you observe her last night, Matilda, when John Humphreys came in? you were talking to her at the moment; I saw her before the door was opened; I saw the colour come, and her eyes sparkle, but she did not look towards him for an instant, till you had finished what you were saying to her, and she had given, as she always does, her modest, quiet answer; and then her eye went straight as an arrow to where he was standing."
"And yet," said Mrs. Chauncey, "she never moved towards him when you did, but stayed quietly on that side of the room with the young ones, till he came round to them; and it was some time too."