Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/204

 the cat's yells of distress and the nurse's coarse rebukes all come mellowed by the distance, and she leaned up aginst me and we had a good little visit. She knew me quite well, for she had been to our house a number of times, and I had seen her at Thomas J.'s when she'd been there to play with the children.

She wuz a affectionate little thing, or she wouldn't have worried so over Jimmy De Graffe. Her eyes wuz big and black and solemn lookin', and her hair curled in little short black curls all over her head, her complexion wuz white and clear, and she looked wan. But I believe it wuz what she had had gin her that made her look so, as well as her late hours and fashionable flirtations. But she wuz very handsome, and I didn't wonder so much what I had always heard, that of all her children Miss Greene Smythe loved this one best, and wuz proudest of her and bound to have her shine in society even at the age of nine, poor little thing! I don't doubt but what her Ma loved her, but it wuz a love so covered up and hid underneath fashion and frivolity and show that I thought to myself it might jest about as well not been there at all for all the good it did her.

Though they say Miss Greene Smythe did once in a while, when she had a few minutes' reprieve from her life work of show and sham, pet little Angenora, and tell her how she loved her, and that she wuz the only comfort of her Ma's hard, toilsome life. Love begets love, and that is why, I spoze, little Angenora wuz the only livin' thing on earth that really loved Miss Greene Smythe, she did love her fondly.

She wuz a tender-hearted child, anyway, and had to love somethin', and wanted to be mothered, wanted to dretfully, but, seein' her mother wuz engaged in her labor