Rosa.
——
CHAPTER III.
MONDE TO EDITH.
Wednesday, Dec. 24th.
Blessed Edith! Guess who said this to-day, after I had been reading aloud in the Westminster Review—“I don’t understand a word, hardly, about this constructive policy and conservative elements, or what sort of difference there is between them. It indeed, seems to me that they must mean really the same thing. Don’t it to you?”
“Oh no, aunt.”
“No, I suppose not; for you are like your uncle. He talks about these things a great deal, and about the political economists, too, as if they were something like gods—or very mischievous men, for I am sure, now I think about it, I can’t tell which it is—whether he approves them or not. At any rate, if they are wise and good men, I think he is as good as the best of them can be, I am sure”—with a long sigh, and listlessly drawing the point of her needle along the hem she was making—“there isn’t an hour, hardly, that I am not wondering at all he knows, and wishing that I were a hundredth part as wise.”
“I wouldn’t mind this, aunt. You are good and kind, and everybody loves you. Aunt! aunt! see! Ponto has upset your basket; he is eating your spools, isn’t he? What a naughty dog.”
Ponto took the reproof for so much coaxing, and came scrambling over me. Aunt half-sighed, half-laughed, and said—