too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind was too much
awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had not been
brought into training early enough. Her incessant tears spoilt her
thread, and Mrs. Kelland decided that "she'd never get her bread till
she was broke of her buke;" which breaking was attempted by a summary
pawning of all poor Lovedy's reward books. The poor child confided
her loss to her young lady teacher at the Sunday school; the young
lady, being new, young, and inflammable, reproached Mrs. Kelland with
dishonesty and tyranny to the orphan, and in return was nearly
frightened out of her wits by such a scolding as only such a woman as
the lace mistress could deliver. Then Mr. Touchett tried his hand,
and though he did not meet with quite so much violence, all he heard
was that she had "given Lovedy the stick for being such a little tod
as to complain, when she knew the money for the bukes was put safe
away in her money-box. She was not going to the Sunday schule again,
not she, to tell stories against her best friends!" And when the
next district visitor came that way, the door was shut in her face,
with the tract thrown out at the opening, and an intimation in Mrs.
Kelland's shrill voice, that no more bukes were wanted; she got
plenty from Miss Curtis.

These bukes from Miss Curtis were sanatory tracts, which Rachel was
constantly bestowing, and which on Sundays Mrs. Kelland spelt
through, with her finger under the line, in happy ignorance whether
the subject were temporal or spiritual, and feeling herself in the
exemplary discharge of a Sunday duty. Moreover, old feudal feeling
made Rachel be unmolested when she came down twice a week, opened the
door of the blackhole under the stairs, and read aloud something
religious, something improving, and a bit of a story, following it up
by mental arithmetic and a lesson on objects, which seemed to Mrs.