Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/227

Rh Even dad darling didn’t understand. He let me do just as I wanted to, just because I wanted to, not because he really understood that I couldn’t be tame and play with dolls. I hate dolls! Real live babies are jolly; but dogs and horses are ever so much nicer than dolls.”

“But you must have lessons, Betty. I shall select your teachers and superintend your studies, and I shall expect you to do me credit along that line, as well as along all others.”

“I’ll try, honest and true, Stephen,” declared Betty. And she kept her word.

At first I looked upon Betty’s education as a duty; in a very short time it had become a pleasure … the deepest and most abiding interest of my life. As I had premised, Betty was good material, and responded to my training with gratifying plasticity. Day by day, week by week, month by month, her character and temperament unfolded naturally under my watchful eye. It was like beholding the gradual development of some rare flower in one’s garden. A little checking and pruning here, a careful training of shoot and tendril there, and, lo, the reward of grace and symmetry!

Betty grew up as I would have wished Jack Churchill’s girl to grow — spirited and proud, with the fine spirit and gracious pride of pure womanhood, loyal and loving, with the loyalty and love of