ning; they were to her mere general calumnies of vague application.
Her mother "bad," indeed! If so, then what was the meaning of goodness?
For poor Lotty's devotion to the child had received its due reward
herein, that she was loved as purely and intensely as any most virtuous
parent could hope to be; so little regard has nature for social codes,
so utterly is she often opposed to all the precepts of respectability.
This phrase of Harriet's was the very first breathing against her
mother's character that Ida had ever heard. Lotty had invented fables,
for the child's amusement, about her own earlier days. The legend was,
that her husband had died about a year after marriage. Of course Ida
implicitly believed all this. Her mind contained pictures of a
beautiful little house just outside London in which her mother had once
lived, and her imagination busied itself with the time when they would
both live in just that same way. She was going to be a teacher, so it
had been decided in confidential chats, and would one day have a school
of her own. In such a future Lotty herself really believed. The child
seemed to her extraordinarily clover, and in four more years she would
be as old as a girl who had assisted with the little ones in the first
school she went to. Lotty was ambitious. Offers of Mrs. Ledward to
teach Ida dressmaking, she had put aside; it was not good enough.

Yet Ida was not in reality remarkable either for industry or quickness
in learning. At both schools she had frequently to be dealt with
somewhat severely. Ability she showed from time to time, but in
application she was sadly lacking. Books were distasteful to her, more
even than to most children; she learned sometimes by listening to the
teacher, but seldom the lessons given her to prepare. At home there
were no books to tempt her to read for herself; her mother never read,
and would not have known how to set about giving her child a love for
such occupation, even had she deemed it needful. And yet Ida always
seemed to have abundance to think about; she would sit by herself for
hours, without any childlike employment, and still not seem weary. When
asked what her thoughts ran upon, she could not give very satisfactory
answers; she was always rather slow in expressing herself, and never
chattered, even to her mother. One queer and most unchildlike habit she
had, which, as if thinking it wrong, she only indulged when quite
alone; she loved to sit before a l