To put it seriously, my dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host
of graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality
compels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age,
in this--that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to
set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn't suit her
views. In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough; but
in matters of importance, it carried her (as my lady thought, and as I
thought) too far. She judged for herself, as few women of twice her age
judge in general; never asked your advice; never told you beforehand
what she was going to do; never came with secrets and confidences to
anybody, from her mother downwards. In little things and great, with
people she loved, and people she hated (and she did both with equal
heartiness), Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own, sufficient for
herself in the joys and sorrows of her life. Over and over again I have
heard my lady say, "Rachel's best friend and Rachel's worst enemy are,
one and the other--Rachel herself."

Add one thing more to this, and I have done.

With all her secrecy, and self-will, there was not so much as the shadow
of anything false in her. I never remember her breaking her word; I
never remember her saying No, and meaning Yes. I can call to mind, in
her childhood, more than one occasion when the good little soul took
the blame, and suffered the punishment, for some fault committed by a
playfellow whom she loved. Nobody ever knew her to confess to it, when
the thing was found out, and she was charged with it afterwards. But
nobody ever knew her to lie about it, either. She looked you straight
in the face, and shook her little saucy head, and said plainly, "I won't
tell you!" Punished again for this, she would own to being sorry for
saying "won't;" but, bread and water notwithstanding, she never told