She spoke slowly and sadly, without raising her eyes.

“Don’t they treat you well?”

“It’s not that they watch every bite I put in my mouth,” returned Amy. “I don’t complain about that, for they’re poor—at least they’re always saying so. But not to be trusted one moment out of their sight—to be always suspected, and followed and watched, and me working my hardest—that’s what drives me wild, Miss Raymount. I’m afraid they’ll make me hate them before long—and them my own flesh and blood, too. It was easier to take at first. I said to myself, ‘They’ll get to know me better!’ But when I found they only got worse, I got tired of it altogether, and grew more and more cross, till now I can’t stand it. If there isn’t a change somehow soon, I shall run away—I shall, indeed, Miss Raymount. Oh, how I wish I could have kept the good temper I used to have—you’re going away so soon, miss! Let me do your hair tonight.”

“But you are tired, my poor child!” said Hester.

“Not too tired for that—it will relax me and bring back my good temper. Maybe some of yours will flow into me through your hair.”

“No, no, Amy. I have none to spare. But do what you like with my hair.”

As Amy lovingly brushed the long wavy overflow of Hester’s beauty, Hester tried to help her understand that she must not think of a happy disposition merely as something that could be put into her and taken out of her. She tried to make her see that everyone has a large supply of good temper at hand, but that it was not theirs until it was made their own by choosing and willing to be good-tempered when inclined not to be—by holding it fast with the hand of determination when the hand of wrong would snatch it away.

“Because I have a book on my shelves,” she said, “it is not therefore mine. When I have read and understood it, then it is a little mine. When I love it and do what it tells me, then it is altogether mine. It is like that with good temper—if you have it sometimes and not at others, then it is not yours. It lies in you like that book on my table—a thing priceless if it were your own, but as it is, a thing you can’t even keep against your poor, weak old aunts.”

As she said all this, Hester felt like a hypocrite, remembering her own weakness and sins. But Amy listened quietly, brushing steadily all the time. Yet scarcely a shadow of Hester’s meaning crossed her mind. If she was in a good temper, she was in a good temper. If she was in a bad temper, she was in a bad temper. She had not a notion of the possibility of having a hand in making her own temper—not a notion that she was in any way accountable for the temper she might find herself in.