“Trust any child to find that out,” said St. Clare; “there’s no keeping it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never excite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance remains in the heart;—it’s a queer kind of a fact,—but so it is.”
“I don’t know how I can help it,” said Miss Ophelia; “they are disagreeable to me,—this child in particular,—how can I help feeling so?”
“Eva does, it seems.”
“Well, she’s so loving! After all, though, she’s no more than Christ-like,” said Miss Ophelia; “I wish I were like her. She might teach me a lesson.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a little child had been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so,” said St. Clare.