nning to her once and
hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without wiping his
shoes, and she took off his arms and said, 'My son, this isn't the best
way to show love. I should be much better pleased to have you come in
quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and kiss me when you forget to
do what I say.'"

"Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, being then only twenty-three.

"Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say to you, if this is the way you
are going to talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam
darted into her eyes. "Really, however, I think she carried things too
far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how
he was brought up."

"Poor fellow!" said I. "I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and
walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there inside
of the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round."

"They are all warm-hearted inside," said Emily. "Would you think she
didn't love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen
nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the
time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It's
perfectly dreadful sometimes to see how intense she is when anything
concerns him; it's her _principle_ that makes her so cold and quiet."

"And a devilish one it is!" said I.

"Chris, you are really growing wicked!"

"I use the word seriously, and in good faith," said I. "Who but the
Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and
keeping the most heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key that
for the greater part of our lives we get no use of it? Of what benefit
is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but
blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows
morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I'll
venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen
islands, knowing as little of each other's inner life as if parted by
eternal barriers of ice,--and all because a cursed principle in the
heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to Nature."

"Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age,
and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been.
The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I
couldn't help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes;
bu