January 9. Why should he not like to talk of a pretty girl? I hope I am not of the women who cannot bear to have a man use his eyes except to see their graces. It is pitiful to be so small and mean. I certainly want George to admire goodness and beauty, and to be by his very affection for me the more sensitive to whatever is admirable in others. If I am to be worthy of being his wife, I must be noble enough to be glad at whatever there is for him to rejoice in because of its loveliness: and yet as I write down all these fine sentiments I feel my heart like lead! Oh, I am so ashamed of myself!
January 10. Miss Charlotte came in this afternoon, looking so thin, and cold, and tall, that I have been rather sober ever since.
"I wish I had on shoes with higher heels," I said to her as we shook hands; "then perhaps I shouldn't feel so insignificant down here."
She looked down at me, laughing that rich, throaty laugh of hers.
"Mother always used to say she knew the Kendalls couldn't have been drowned in the Flood," she answered, "for they must all have been tall enough to wade to Mt. Ararat."
"You know the genealogy so far back that you must be able to tell whether she was right."
"I don't go quite so far as that," she said, sitting down by the fire, "but I know that my great-great-grandfather married a Privet, so that I always considered Judge Privet a cousin."
"If Father was a cousin, I must be one too," said I.
"You are the same relation to me on one side," Miss Charlotte went on, "that Deacon Webbe is on the other. It's about fortieth cousin, you see, so that I can count it or not, as I please."
"I am flattered that you choose to count us in," I told her, smiling; "and I am sure also you must be willing to count in anybody so good as Deacon Webbe."
"Yes, Deacon Webbe is worth holding on to, though he's so weak that he'd let the shadow of a mosquito bully him. The answer to the question in the New England Primer, 'Who is the meekest man?' ought to be 'Deacon Webbe.' He used up all the meekness there was in the whole family, though."
"I confess that I never heard Mrs. Webbe called meek," I assented.
"Meek!" sniffed Miss Charlotte; "I should think not. A wasp is a Sunday-school picnic beside her. While as for Tom"--