kept her too close; gave her no liberty at all; even on
Sundays she had put a stop to the little Bible readings in the
Sunday-school, by not letting Matilda go till the regular school time.
She never went to Lilac Lane; never to Mrs. Laval's. She did go
sometimes to the parsonage; for Mr. Richmond had managed it--Matilda
did not know how; and once she had met Norton in the street and told
him how things were with her, at which he was intensely and very
gratifyingly displeased. But his displeasure could not help. The weeks
went steadily on with a slow grinding power, as it felt to Matilda.
There seemed to be less and less of her every week, to judge by her own
sensations. Less spirit and spring; less hope and desire; less strength
and pleasure. Work was grinding her down, she thought--work and
discipline. She was getting to be a little machine that her aunt
managed at pleasure; and it did not seem to herself that it was really
Matilda Englefield any longer. She was a different somebody. And that
was in a measure true. Yet the work doing was more and better than she
knew. It was not all lace-mending, and mantua-making, and learning
rules of arithmetic and French verbs. The child was growing pale, it is
true; she was also growing strong-hearted in a new way. Not in the way
of passion, which is not strong; but in the way of patience.
Self-command was making her worth twice as much as she ever had been in
her life before. Matilda constantly did what she would rather not, and
did it well. She sewed when she would have liked to do something else;
she studied when she was tired; she obeyed commands that were hateful
to her; she endured from her aunt what her child's heart regarded as
unspeakable indignities and disagreeablenesses; and she bore them, she
was forced to bear them, without a murmur, without a sign of what she
felt. More than that. Since her last recorded talk with Mr. Richmond,
Matilda had been striving to bear and to do without anger or
impatience; she had prayed a great deal about it; and now it was
getting to be a matter of course to oppose gentleness and a meek heart
to all the trials that came upon her. In proportion as this was true,
they grew easier to bear; far less hard and heavy; the sting seemed to
be going out of them. Nevertheless the struggle and the sorrow and the
confinement made the child's face grow thin and pale. Mrs. Candy said
it was the hot weather.

July and August passed in this manner; and