remembering Blair, or talk of Elizabeth without contrasting her
with Nannie. Nannie had none of that caroling vitality which made
the younger girl an acute anxiety and a perpetual delight. She
was like a little plant growing in the shade--a gently good
child, who never gave anybody any trouble; she continued to be a
'fraid-cat, and looked under the bed every night for a burglar.
With Blair at boarding-school her life was very solitary, for of
course there was no intimacy between her and her stepmother. Mrs.
Maitland was invariably kind to her, and astonishingly patient
with the rather dull little mind--one of those minds that are
like softly tangled skeins of single zephyr; if you try to unwind
the mild, elusive thoughts, they only knot tightly upon
themselves, and the result is a half-frightened and very
obstinate silence. But Mrs. Maitland never tried to unwind
Nannie's thoughts; she used to look at her sometimes in kindly
amusement, as one might look at a kitten or a canary; and
sometimes she said to Robert Ferguson that Nannie was like her
own mother;--"but Blair has brains!" she would say, complacently.
School did not give the girl the usual intense friendships, and
except for Elizabeth, she had no companions; her one interest was
Blair, and her only occupation out of school hours was her
drawing--which was nothing more than endless, meaningless
copying. It was Nannie's essential child-likeness that kept her
elders, and indeed David and Blair too, from understanding that
she and Elizabeth were no longer little girls. Perhaps the boys
first realized Elizabeth's age when they simultaneously
discovered that she was pretty....

Elizabeth's long braids had been always attractive to the
masculine eye; they had suggested jokes about pigtails, and much