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228 beautiful and afflicted child. Edith brought home the milk with due care, but she had almost always to run back again for some fruit, flowers, honey, or cake, which her new friends had offered her.

Edith’s health and temper became equally improved, and, even in the very heat of anger, a word or a look from her sister would soften her at once. But it was over Mrs. Beaumont that Fanny's interest was the most remarkable and advantageous. Her mother could not devolve every difficulty upon her, as she did, without an unconciousunconscious [sic] respect for the strength of mind displayed by one so young; yet, thanks to Fanny's sweetness, this was attended by none of that bitterness which too often attends such a change in the natural position of child and parent. But Mrs. Beaumont could not but see that her ease and her amusement were everything to her affectionate daughter; while Fanny had never loved her mother so well as now that she was her chief object, and her renewed cheerfulness the great