g.

'Why, what's all this about? You're not going to sulk with me, my dear,
are you?'

'I think you're a very cruel, bad, unkind old woman for deceiving me
like this!'

'Goodness me! Why, didn't the jewels come, after all?'

'Yes--they came, only they were all horrid artificial ones--and it is a
shame, it _is_!' cried poor Priscilla from her bursting heart.

'Artificial, were they? that really is very odd! Can you account for
that at all, now?'

'Of course I can't! You told me that they would drop out whenever I said
anything to improve people--and I was _always_ saying _something_
improving! Aunt had a bandbox in her room quite full of them.'

'Ah, you've been very industrious, evidently; it's unfortunate your
jewels should all have been artificial--most unfortunate. I don't know
how to explain it, unless'--(and here the old lady looked up queerly
from under her white eyelashes), 'unless your goodness was artificial
too?'

'How do you mean?' asked Priscilla, feeling strangely uncomfortable.
'I'm sure I've never done anything the least bit naughty--how can my
goodness possibly be artificial?'

'Ah, that I can't explain; but I know this--that people who are really
good are generally the last persons to suspect it, and the moment they
become aware of it and begin to think how good they are, and how bad
everybody else is, why, somehow or other, their goodness crumbles away
and leaves only a sort of outside shell behind it. And--I'm very old,
and of course I may be mistaken--but I think (I only say I _think_,
mind) that a little girl so young as you must have some faults hidden
about her somewhere, and that perhaps on the whole she would be better
employed in trying to find them out and cure them before she attempted
to correct those of other people. And I'm sure it can't be good for any
child to be always seeing herself in a little picture, just as she likes
to fancy other people see her. Very many pretty books are written about
good little girls, and it is quite true that children may exercise a
great influence for good--more than they can ever tell, perhaps--but
only just so long as they remain natural and unconscious, and not
unwholesome little pragmatical prigesses; for then they make themselves
and other people worse than they might have been. But of course, my
dear, you never made such a mistake as that!'

Priscilla turned very red, and began to scrape one of her feet against
the other; she was thinking,