name like that, but a little touch of defiance came into her face too--
"he is all of one kind. He's not a blend. And he's married to her in
there!"

"You needn't speak in that tone about her. She's as fine as can be."

"She's as fine as a bee," retorted Kitty. Again she laughed that almost
mirthless laugh for which her mother had called her to account a moment
before. "You asked me a while ago what I was laughing at, mother," she
continued. "Why, can't you guess? Mr. Crozier talked of her always as
though she was--well, like the pictures you've seen of Britannia, all
swelling and spreading, with her hand on a shield and her face saying,
'Look at me and be good,' and her eyes saying, 'Son of man, get upon thy
knees!' Why, I expected to see a sort of great--goodness--gracious
goddess, that kept him frightened to death of her. Bless you, he never
opened her letter, he was so afraid of her; and he used to breathe once
or twice hard--like that, when he mentioned her!" She breathed in such
mock awe that her mother laughed with a little kindly malice too.

"Even her letter," Kitty continued remorselessly, "it was as though she
--that little sprite--wrote it with a rod of chastisement, as the Bible
says. It--"

"What do you know of the inside of that letter?" asked her mother,
staring.

"What the steam of the tea-kettle could let me see," responded Kitty
defiantly; and then, to her shocked mother, she told what she had done,
and what the nature of the letter was.