Bernardine had suffered a cheerless childhood in which dolls and toys
took no leading part. She had no affection to bestow on any doll, nor
any woolly lamb, nor apparently on any human person; unless, perhaps,
there was the possibility of a friendly inclination towards Uncle
Zerviah, who would not have understood the value of any deeper feeling,
and did not therefore call the child cold-hearted and unresponsive, as
he might well have done.

This she certainly was, judged by the standard of other children; but
then no softening influences had been at work during her tenderest
years. Aunt Malvina knew as much about sympathy as she did about the
properties of an ellipse; and even the fairies had failed to win little
Bernardine. At first they tried with loving patience what they might do
for her; they came out of their books, and danced and sang to her, and
whispered sweet stories to her, at twilight, the fairies' own time. But
she would have none of them, for all their gentle persuasion. So they
gave up trying to please her, and left her as they had found her,
loveless. What can be said of a childhood which even the fairies have
failed to touch with the warm glow of affection?

Such a little restless spirit, striving to express itself now in this
direction, now in that; yet always actuated by the same constant force,
_the desire for work_. Bernardine seemed to have no special wish to be
useful to others; she seemed just to have a natural tendency to work,
even as others have a natural tendency to play. She was always in
earnest; life for little Bernardine meant something serious.

Then the years went by. She grew up and filled her life with many
interests and ambitions. She was at least a worker, if nothing else;