l in my lap, and
both hands on that, riling up like an Irish girl's coffee, and feeling
the wrath within me grow stronger and stronger while she settled back
and half-shut her eyes, and seemed to be quite satisfied that she had
done her best. I could see that her half-shut eyes were turned on my
alpaca dress, which was a trifle dusty, and on my cotton gloves, that
were clean and whole, at any rate. While she examined them, I took an
observation of her. Mercy, how she has changed! Five times the hair she
ever had before hung in great, heavy braided loops down her back. There
must be some way of making the hair grow, 'specially here in York, that
we never heard of. And her figure, which was slim and graceful as the
droop of a willow when she married, has swelled out fearfully behind,
which makes her seem to stoop, and gives one the most humpy idea of a
camel in motion of anything I know, which, being Scriptural, is, I dare
say, the only religious idea she has kept firm to.

"You called the other day," says she. "I was so sorry not to have seen
you; but I was dressing to go out. Still, you saw my little girl?"

"Yes," says I, "I saw your little girl; and, to tell you the honest
truth, that is what brings me here now. I haven't had a minute's rest
since I was here. Why, Cousin Emily, I expected to see a child. Instead
of that--"

She roused up at this, opened her eyes wide, and interrupted me.

"Instead of that," says she, turning a great gold bracelet on her arm,
and smiling as if what she was saying swelled her out with
pride--"instead of that, you found a finished young lady. No wonder you
were surprised."

"A finished young lady!" says I, riling into strength. "That is what no
child ever can be; and let me tell you, the attempt to force one into
such an unnatural creature is abominable. You can polish every bit of
the modesty and innocence of childhood out of a little girl; but all
that you can get for it is affectation and self-sufficient impertinence,
becoming neither to the child nor the woman. Why, cousin, the little
creature I saw in your parlor--sent there, as she said, to _entertain a
gentleman_--was just an absurdity to him, and to me something dreadful.
I asked myself what a child like that would become at forty years of
age. Why, cousin, when she is at her meridian she will feel herself at
least a hundred and fifty. You have cut off all the bloom and richness
of a young life; you have made a dainty little