The stars of the family, in Donald's and Dorothy's estimation, were Benjamin Buster, who had seen the world already, had enjoyed adventures and hair-breadth escapes, and was now at home for the first time in four years; Charity Cora, whose eager, dark eyes told their own story of patient aspiration; and little Fandy. Mr. Danby was proud of all his children, though perhaps proudest of Baby Jamie because there was no knowing what the child might come to; but Mrs. Danby looked with absolute reverence upon her eldest--Amanda Arabella. "Such a mind as that girl has, Mr. Danby," she would say to her husband, "it isn't for us to comprehend. She might have come just so out of a book, Amanda might." And Mr. Danby would nod a pleased and puzzled assent, vaguely wondering how long he could manage to hold his high parental state over so gifted a creature.
Amanda Arabella's strong points were poetry and sentiment. To be sure, she scrubbed the floor and washed the dishes, but she did these menial duties "with her head in the clouds," as she herself had confessed to her mother. Her soul was above it, and as soon as she could, she intended to "go somewhere and perfect herself." This idea of going somewhere to perfect herself was one which she had entertained in secret for some time, though she had not the slightest idea of where she could go, and in just what way she was to be perfected. She only knew that, at present, housework and the nine brothers and sisters were quite as much as she could attend to, excepting at odd moments when "the poetry fit was on her," as her mother expressed it--"and then wild horses couldn't stop her!"
"I can't deny, Mr. Reed," said that proud mother to her kind neighbor,--who, on the morning after the interview with Donald and Dorothy in his study, had halted at Mrs. Danby's whitewashed gate, to wish her a stately "Good-morning, madam!" and to ask after her family,--"I can't deny, and be honest, that I'm uncommon blest in my children, though the Lord has seen fit to give us more than a extra lot of 'em. They're peart and sound as heart could wish, and so knowin'! Why," she continued, lowering her voice and drawing closer to the gate, "there's my Fandy now, only eight years old, can preach 'most like a parson! It'd rise your hair with surprise to hear him. An' Ben, my oldest boy, has had such adventures, an' haps an' mishaps, as ought to be writ out in a birogrophy. An' there's Amanda Arabella, my daughter--well, if I only could set down the workin's o' my brain as that girl can, I'd do! She has got a most uncommon lively brain. Why, the other day--but all this time you're standin', Mr. Reed. Won't you walk in, sir? Well, certainly, sir, it ain't to be 'xpected you _could_ take time goin' by so, as you are--Well, my 'Mandy, sir, only the other day was a-comin' out into the shed with a pan o' dish-water, and she sees a rainbow. 'Ma!' says she, a-callin' me, 'take this 'ere dish-water!' and before I knowed it, she was a writin' down with her lead-pencil the beautifullest ideas that ever was,--all about that rainbow. In the evening, when her Pa come, I just up and showed it to him, an' he says, says he, 'Them's the grandest thoughts I ever see put to paper!'"