exhausted the English language in commendation of her efforts.
Nothing is so wearing on one as continual demand for praise, and
Caddie's capacity is exhaustless. I'm sorry she didn't have the
little cakes."

"She's going to make some to-morrow and send them to me. It's
pop-corn in this box." Dorothea held up the latter and shook it.
"Moses brought it from Virginia. They are the cunningest little ears
you've ever saw. Wasn't it nice of Moses to think about us and bring
it? Of course, he didn't know we would be away so long and that I
was going to be sick and he wouldn't see me until spring; but it's a
thing that keeps, and the drier it is the prettier it pops, he says.
What is that picture over there, Uncle Winthrop? It is very ugly."

Laine glanced at the picture to which Dorothea pointed. "That is a
Jan Steen--'The Village Fair.' Sorry you don't like it. You think
that Botticelli is ugly also. A little later in life it may meet
with your approval. The original is priceless."

"A lot of priceless things aren't pretty. I don't ever expect to be
a culturated person. Mother makes me go to all those old galleries
and museums, when we're in Europe, and look at a lot of cracked
pictures and broken statues and carved things, and wants me to think
they're beautiful, but I don't. Some of them are hideous, and I get
so tired of being told I must admire them that I make a face inside
at most of them as I walk along, though, of course, outside, for
mother's sake, I don't make any signs. I'm a great disappointment to
mother. We had a lady artist guide the last time we were in Italy.
She used to get so mad with me that once she shook me. Father would
have killed her if she hadn't been a lady, and after that he and I