wholesome consciousness so far as it goes--but it did not go very
far with Elizabeth; she never suffered in any deeper way. She
took her temper for granted; she was not complacent about it; she
did not credit it to "temperament," she was merely matter of
fact; she said she "couldn't help it." "I don't want to get mad,"
she used to say to Nannie; "and of course I never mean any of the
horrid things I say. I'd like to be good, like you; but I can't
help being wicked." Between those dark moments of being "wicked"
she was a joyous, unself-conscious girl of generous loves, which
she expressed as primitively as she did her angers; indeed, in
the expression of affection Elizabeth had the exquisite and
sometimes embarrassing innocence of a child who has been brought
up by a sad old bachelor and a timid old maid. As for her angers,
they were followed by irrational efforts to "make up" with any
one she felt she had wronged. She spent her little pocket-money
in buying presents for her maleficiaries, she invented
punishments for herself; and generally she confessed her sin with
humiliating fullness. Once she confessed to her uncle, thereby
greatly embarrassing him:

"Uncle, I want you to know I am a great sinner; probably the
chief of sinners," she said, breathing hard. She had come into
his library after supper, and was standing with a hand on the
back of his chair; her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

"Good gracious!" said Robert Ferguson, looking at her blankly
over his glasses, "what on earth have you been doing now?"

"I got mad, and I chopped up the feather in Cherry-pie's new
bonnet, and I told her she was a hideous, monstrous old donkey-