Page:Orange Grove.djvu/100

 This was a source of annoyance to Walter, whose fastidiousness about any approach to dissimulation and strict regard for truth, often led him to reprove her, but with no other effect than to have a fresh joke served on himself.

He was a great favorite of hers, whom she was ever ready to serve, whether up to her elbows in suds, or engaged in the more delicate art of cakes and pastry, the most tempting specimens of which were always reserved for him.

Another inmate of the family was Milly Dayton, The opposite of Kate in every respect, singularly enough they contracted quite an intimate friendship.

In both existed a prevalent vein of good humor that was never out of sorts with anybody or anything; one passing by trivial vexations as not worthy of notice; the other laughing them down as the most philosophical way of disposing of them, meeting here on the same level. Milly was a philosopher whose ideas were founded on principle and method. Quiet and reserved, theoretical rather than practical, possessing a mind of great depth and refinement, cultivated as her own private property rather than for the advantages it might confer on others, she was one of those gentle, meek spirits that resemble the modest little flowers growing in the clifts of the rock, which elude the superficial gaze of the world's busy throng, but attract the attention of the student of nature, who discovers even here the embodiment of that great law of symmetry and beauty which stamps every created object with the divine purpose of its being.