Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/316

 you do a good, helpful thing for a person your hull soul feels comfortable and you bring up unconscious mental reasons why you did it, it wuz because they wuz so good, so smart, and so you keep on feelin' good and comfortable, you keep on praisin' 'em to your own self till you git fairly in love with 'em, as it were.

A very curious thing. But the way I do when I git hold of a strange fact or truth, I don't wait to explain it full to myself before I act on it; no, I grasp hold of it and use it for my own benefit and afterwards wonder at it to my heart's content.

So Delight got to thinkin' she wuz necessary to the baby's happiness, and that tickled her little self-esteem jest as though she wuz a older child (only accordin' to her weight). She got to thinkin' she must watch over her or she might git hurt, which called out all the good motherly protectin' impulses of her little soul which wuz in her (still accordin' to her weight, forty pounds more or less). And day by day Delight's love for the little creeter grew till it wuz fairly beautiful to see 'em together, and so Josiah said, and her Pa and Ma and the neighbors.

But to resoom backwards a little. As for Miss Worden, I thought to myself, disappintments or not, I have got to give her a-talkin' to, and so I did, the very next time I see her. She had gone when Delight and I went out of the parlor, Delight with bright, happy eyes, and I with kinder thoughtful, pityin' ones, and all four on 'em kinder wet. But the next time I see her alone I tackled her, and she jest as good as promised she wouldn't ever say to any human child agin what she had said to Delight. And I don't believe she will. She hain't such a bad creeter after all, and, good land! what