“How long is she dead, do you know?”
“I do not; I hardly remember anything about her. She died when I was a young slip—a mere child, I believe. Still,” she proceeded, rather slowly, musing and putting her beautiful and taper fingers to her chin—“I think that I do remember—it's like a dhrame to me though, an' I dunna but it is one—still it's like a dhrame to me, that I was wanst in her arms, that I was cryin', an' that she kissed me—that she kissed me! If she had lived, it's a different life maybe I'd lead an' a different creature I'd be to-day, maybe, but I never had a mother.”
“Did your father marry a second time?”
“He did.”
“Then you have a step-mother?”
“Ay have I.”
“Is she kind to you, an' do you like her?”
“Middlin'—she's not so bad—better than I deserve, I doubt; I'm sorry for what I did to her; but then I have the divil's temper, an' have no guide o' myself when it comes on me. I know whatever she may be to me, I'm not the best step-daughter to her.”
The strange female was evidently much struck with the appearance and singularly artless disposition of Sarah, as well as with her extraordinary candor; and indeed no wonder; for as this neglected creature spoke, especially with reference to her mother, her eyes flashed and softened with an expression of brilliancy and tenderness that might be said to resemble the sky at night, when the glowing corruscations of the Aurora Borealis sweep over it like expanses of lightning, or fade away into those dim but graceful undulations which fill the mind with a sense of such softness and beauty.
“I don't know,” observed her companion, sighing and looking at her affectionately, “how any step-mother could be harsh to you.”