“You wanted me to bring her up right; and you ought to remember she is a reasonable creature, and be careful of your influence over her.”

“O, dismal! so I ought; but, as Topsy herself says, ‘I ’s so wicked!’”

In very much this way Topsy’s training proceeded, for a year or two,—Miss Ophelia worrying herself, from day to day, with her, as a kind of chronic plague, to whose inflictions she became, in time, as accustomed, as persons sometimes do to the neuralgia or sick headache.

St. Clare took the same kind of amusement in the child that a man might in the tricks of a parrot or a pointer. Topsy, whenever her sins brought her into disgrace in other quarters, always took refuge behind his chair; and St. Clare, in one way or other, would make peace for her. From him she got many a stray picayune, which she laid out in nuts and candies, and distributed, with careless generosity, to all the children in the family; for Topsy, to do her justice, was good-natured and liberal, and only spiteful in self- defence. She is fairly introduced into our corps be ballet, and will figure, from time to time, in her turn, with other performers.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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