it was a cat."

"She's always doing something silly," snapped Lavinia. "My
mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly. She
says she will grow up eccentric."

It was quite true that Sara was never "grand." She was a
friendly little soul, and shared her privileges and belongings
with a free hand. The little ones, who were accustomed to being
disdained and ordered out of the way by mature ladies aged ten
and twelve, were never made to cry by this most envied of them
all. She was a motherly young person, and when people fell down
and scraped their knees, she ran and helped them up and patted
them, or found in her pocket a bonbon or some other article of a
soothing nature. She never pushed them out of her way or alluded
to their years as a humiliation and a blot upon their small
characters.

"If you are four you are four," she said severely to Lavinia on
an occasion of her having--it must be confessed--slapped Lottie
and called her "a brat;" "but you will be five next year, and
six the year after that. And," opening large, convicting eyes,
"it takes sixteen years to make you twenty."

"Dear me," said Lavinia, "how we can calculate!" In fact, it
was not to be denied that sixteen and four made twenty--and
twenty was an age the most daring were scarcely bold enough to
dream of.

So the younger children adored Sara. More than once she had