et, before the answer could
be put into words, unsuspected and unforeseen difficulties began to
appear. They increased; they multiplied; they brought about another
defeat. The effort to explain came to a standstill. Then Susy tried to
help her mother out--with an instance, an example, an illustration. The
mother was getting ready to go down-town, and one of her errands was to
buy a long-promised toy-watch for Susy.

"If you forgot the watch, mamma, would that be a little thing?"

She was not concerned about the watch, for she knew it would not be
forgotten. What she was hoping for was that the answer would unriddle
the riddle, and bring rest and peace to her perplexed little mind.

The hope was disappointed, of course--for the reason that the size of a
misfortune is not determinate by an outsider's measurement of it, but
only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected
by it. The king's lost crown is a vast matter to the king, but of no
consequence to the child. The lost toy is a great matter to the child,
but in the king's eyes it is not a thing to break the heart about. A
verdict was reached, but it was based upon the above model, and Susy was
granted leave to measure her disasters thereafter with her own
tape-line.

As a child, Susy had a passionate temper; and it cost her much remorse
and many tears before she learned to govern it, but after that it was a
wholesome salt, and her character was the stronger and healthier for its
presence. It enabled her to be good with dignity; it preserved her not
only from being good for vanity's sake, but from even the appearance of
it. In looking back over the long vanished years, it seems but natural
and excusable that I should dwell with longing affection and preference
upon incidents of her young life which made it beautiful to us, and that
I should let its few small offences go unsummoned and unreproached.

In the summer of 1880, when Susy was just eight years of age, the
family were at Quarry Farm, as usual at that season of the year.
Hay-cutting time was approaching, and Susy and Clara were counting the
hours, for the time was big with a great event for them; they had been
promised that they might mount the wagon and ride home from the fields
on the summit of the hay mountain. This perilous privilege, so dear to
their age and species, had never been granted them before. Their
excitement had no bounds. They could talk of nothing but this
epoch-maki