"No, he never did any such thing," answered Henrietta, promptly--and
what Henrietta says is always the truth, because she isn't afraid of
anybody or anything enough to tell a lie---"he just telled me over and
over in a whole lot of words how I ought to love and be good to Sallie.
If I was to love Sallie that kind of way, he said, I would be so busy I
couldn't do none of the things Sallie don't like to do herself and makes
me do. 'Stid er saying, 'my precious mother, I love you and want to be
good because you want me to,' about every hour, I had better wipe the
twins' noses, and wash the dirt often them, and light Aunt Dilsie's
phthisic pipe, and get things upstairs for Sallie and Miss Jasmine and
everybody when they are downstairs. I'm too busy, I am, to be so
religious. And I'm too hungry to talk any more about it." With which she
departed.

I sank on the side steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came
down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it
was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just
one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day.
Poor tot, she does have a hard and hardening time--and how can I lecture
her for swearing?

With a train of thought started by Henrietta I sat at my solitary
breakfast in a deeply contemplative mood. Life was going to press hard
on Henrietta. And reared in the fossilized atmosphere of Widegables,
which tried to draw all its six separate feminine breaths as one with a
lone, supporting man, how was she to develop the biceps of strength of
mind and soul, as well as body, to meet the conditions she was likely
to have to meet? Still her coming tussle with Aunt Augusta would be a
tonic at least. I was just breaking a last muffin and beginning to smile