Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/172

 was the great comfort of Kitty’s existence. Always kindly, helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish question too difficult for her tender heart—her delicate insight. How different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty’s fate to live. Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the bluest Girtonian green with envy. She had read a great deal, too—the really solid works that are such a nuisance to get through, and that leave a mark on one’s mind like the track of a steamroller. That was Aunt Eliza’s doing. Kitty ought to have been grateful—but she wasn’t. She didn’t want to be improved with solid