"Much you know about her, Miss Alice! Thanks, indeed! I
haven't seen the sign of such a thing since she's been here,
for all I have worked and worked, and had plague enough with
her, I am sure. Deliver me from other people's children, say
I!"
"After all, Miss Fortune," said Alice, soberly, "it is not
what we _do_ for people that makes them love us — or, at least,
everything depends on the way things are done. A look of love,
a word of kindness, goes further towards winning the heart
than years of service, or benefactions mountain high, without
them."
"Does she say I am unkind to her?" asked Miss Fortune,
fiercely.
"Pardon me," said Alice, "words on her part are unnecessary;
it is easy to see from your own that there is no love lost
between you, and I am very sorry it is so."
"Love, indeed!" said Miss Fortune, with great indignation;
"there never was any to lose, I can assure you. She plagues
the very life out of me. Why, she hadn't been here three days
before she went off with that girl Nancy Vawse, that I had
told her never to go near, and was gone all night; that's the
time she got in the brook. And if you'd seen her face when I
was scolding her about it! it was like seven thunderclouds.
Much you know about it! I dare say she's very sweet to you;
that's the way she is to everybody beside me; they all think
she's too good to live; and it just makes me mad!"
"She told me herself," said Alice, "of her behaving ill
another time, about her mother's letter.
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