"Oh, it's no matter, child; I didn't care about it. I'm pretty well used to your temper."

Bang went the door, and in a moment Nina stood in the entry, shaking her fist at it with impotent wrath.

"You stony, stiff, disagreeable old creature! how came you ever to be my mother's sister?" And, with the word mother, she burst into a tempest of tears, and rushed violently to her own chamber. The first object that she saw was Milly, arranging some clothes in her drawer; and, to her astonishment, Nina rushed up to her, and, throwing her arms round her neck, sobbed and wept in such tumultuous excitement that the good creature was alarmed.

"Laws bless my soul, my dear little lamb! what's the matter? Why, don't! Don't, honey! Why, bless the dear little soul! bless the dear precious lamb! who's been a hurting of it?" And, at each word of endearment, Nina's distress broke out afresh, and she sobbed so bitterly that the faithful creature really began to be frightened.

"Laws, Miss Nina, I hope there an't nothing happened to you now!"

"No, no, nothing, Milly, only I am lonesome, and I want my mother! I haven't got any mother! Dear me!" she said, with a fresh burst.

"Ah, the poor thing!" said Milly, compassionately, sitting down, and fondling Nina in her arms, as if she had been a babe. "Poor chile! Laws, yes; I 'member your ma was a beautiful woman!"

"Yes," said Nina, speaking between her sobs, "the girls at school had mothers. And there was Mary Brooks, she used to read to me her mother's letters, and I used to feel so, all the while, to think nobody wrote such letters to me! And there's Aunt Nesbit—I don't care what they say about her being religious, she is the most selfish, hateful creature I ever did see! I do believe, if I was lying dead and laid out in the next room to her, she would be thinking what she'd get next for dinner!"

"Oh, don't, my poor lamb, don't!" said Milly, compassionately.

"Yes, I will, too! She's always taking it for granted that I'm the greatest sinner on the face of the earth! She don't scold me—she don't care enough about me to scold! She only takes it for granted, in her hateful, quiet way, that I'm going to destruction, and that she can't help it, and don't care! Supposing I'm not good!—what's to make me good? Is it going to make me good for people to sit up so stiff, and tell me they always knew I was a fool, and a flirt, and all that? Milly, I've had dreadful turns of wanting to be good, and I've laid awake nights and cried because I wasn't good. And what makes it worse is, that I think if Ma was alive she could help me. She wasn't like Aunt Nesbit, was she, Milly?"

"No, honey, she wasn't. I'll tell you about your ma some time, honey."