I am sad, and turn
bright and hopeful as soon as I grow glad. Dear Mrs. Buxton! I wish Nancy
knew you."

The gay, volatile, willful, warm-hearted Erminia was less earnest in all
things. Her childhood had been passed amid the distractions of wealth; and
passionately bent upon the attainment of some object at one moment, the
next found her angry at being reminded of the vanished anxiety she had
shown but a moment before. Her life was a shattered mirror; every part
dazzling and brilliant, but wanting the coherency and perfection of
a whole. Mrs. Buxton strove to bring her to a sense of the beauty of
completeness, and the relation which qualities and objects bear to each
other; but in all her striving she retained hold of the golden clue of
sympathy. She would enter into Erminia's eagerness, if the object of
it varied twenty times a day; but by-and-by, in her own mild, sweet,
suggestive way, she would place all these objects in their right and
fitting places, as they were worthy of desire. I do not know how it was,
but all discords, and disordered fragments, seemed to fall into harmony and
order before her presence.

She had no wish to make the two little girls into the same kind of pattern
character. They were diverse as the lily and the rose. But she tried to
give stability and earnestness to Erminia; while she aimed to direct
Maggie's imagination, so as to make it a great minister to high ends,
instead of simply contributing to the vividness and duration of a reverie.

She told her tales of saints and martyrs, and all holy heroines, who forgot
themselves, and strove only to be "ministers of Him, to do His pleasure."
The tears glistened in the eyes of hearer and speaker, while she spoke in
her low, faint voice, which was almost choked at times when she came to the
noblest part of all.

But when she found that Maggie was in danger of becoming too little a
dweller in the present, from the habit of anticipating the occasion for
some great heroic action, she spoke of other heroines. She told her how,
though the lives of these women of old were only known to us through some
striking glorious deed, they yet must have built up the temple of their
perfection by many noiseless stories; how, by small daily offerings laid
on the altar, they must have obtained their beautiful strength for the
crowning sacrifice. And then she would turn and speak of those whose names
will never be blazoned on earth--some poor maid-servant, or hard