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no satisfaction in thinking over. She put it from her mind and in nervous haste, passed the other articles of clothing to Hester.
"I've saved even her shoes. You see what a little foot she had. Your mother was a very pretty woman, Hester. Of course, I saw her only that hour at dinner when she sat in the kitchen. She had dark eyes and hair and a plump, round figure. You look like her, only there is a difference. Your eyes are dark but they don't look as your mother's did, and your mouth and expression are not as I remember hers to be."
Hester made no comment as she looked over the clothes. She was not at all moved by the sight of these things. She was sixteen, and had come to the place where she was able to understand much that Debby did not tell her.
She knew that something lay back of all this. Why had none of these people come for her? What were they that they would leave a little child in the world without ever making an effort to find her? They could not have been fine people. Hester was confident of that. She had picked up Debby's word and mentally set down the people from which she had sprung as "poor stock."
"If I ever am anything at all, it will be because of Aunt Debby's training," she concluded as the last article of her mother's clothes lay in her hands.
"It seems strange that they never came for you."
"I'm glad they didn't," responded Hester. Her pride was in arms. If her own people cared so little for her, she would never grieve for them.
"I am glad--very glad that they didn't," she repeated. "I belong to you. I'd rather be your girl than anyone's else and I couldn't be that if they had taken me away when I was a baby."
According to tradition, Hester's sentiment was not at all proper. One should cherish one's family above all else.
"It isn't right to say such things, Hester. Of course, you and I are very near to each other; but you cannot feel toward me as though I was your mother."
"Of course not. I feel a great deal more." She arose to her feet, dropping on the floor, the articles of clothing which had been in her lap. "Why, Aunt Debby, I'd treasure an old shoe-lace of yours more than those things." She pointed to the heap of clothes on the floor.
Debby meant to be firm. She had intended from the first that Hester should be rigidly disciplined. She believed in "the speak-when-spoken-to" child. But there are some arguments that cannot be questioned. She wanted Hester to love her above anyone else. She could not chide her for doing that. Debby's discipline went to the winds.
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