"But perhaps, after all, I may have been unfair to her!" said Molly.
"People are so queer! They seem sometimes to be altogether made up of
odd bits of different people. There's Aunt Ann now! she would not do a
tradesman out of a ha'penny, but she will cheat at backgammon!"

"I know she will, and that is why I never play with her. It is so seldom
she will give herself any recreation, that it makes me sorry to refuse
her."

"There is one thing that troubles me," said Molly, after a little pause.

"What is it, my child? I always like to hear something troubles you, for
then I know you are going to have something. To miss is the preparation
for receiving."

"I can't care--much--about poetry--and Walter says such fine things
about it! Walter is no fool!"

"Far from one, I am glad to think!" said Richard, laughing. Molly's
straightforward, humble confidence, he found as delightful as amusing.

"It seems to me so silly to scoff at things because you can't go in for
them! I sometimes hear people make insulting remarks about music, and
music I _know_ to be a good and precious and lovely thing. Then I think
with myself, they must be in the same condition with regard to music,
that I am in with regard to poetry. So I take care not to be a fool in
talking about what I don't know. That I am stupid is no reason for being
a fool. Any one whom God has made stupid, has a right to be stupid, but
no right to call others fool because they are not stupid."