The child's own letters were simply a mirror of the ideas of the Farnham ladies; that must have been so, it was not altogether my jaundiced eye.

Alice and Emma and grandmamma paraded the pages in turn.

I very early gave up hope of discoveries in my daughter, though as much of the original as I could detect was satisfactorily simple and sturdy.

I found little things to criticize, of course, tendencies to correct; and by return post I criticized and corrected, but the distance and the deliberation seemed to touch my maxims with a kind of arid frivolity, and sometimes I tore them up.

One quick, warm-blooded scolding would have been worth a sheaf of them.