praying like some Catholic or Methodist enthusiast--some precocious
fanatic or untimely saint--I scarcely know what thoughts I had; but
they ran risk of being hardly more rational and healthy than that
child's mind must have been.

I seldom caught a word of her prayers, for they were whispered low:
sometimes, indeed, they were not whispered at all, but put up
unuttered; such rare sentences as reached my ear still bore the
burden, "Papa; my dear papa!" This, I perceived, was a one-idea'd
nature; betraying that monomaniac tendency I have ever thought the
most unfortunate with which man or woman can be cursed.

What might have been the end of this fretting, had it continued
unchecked, can only be conjectured: it received, however, a sudden
turn.

One afternoon, Mrs. Bretton, coaxing her from her usual station
in a corner, had lifted her into the window-seat, and, by way of
occupying her attention, told her to watch the passengers and count
how many ladies should go down the street in a given time. She
had sat listlessly, hardly looking, and not counting, when--my eye
being fixed on hers--I witnessed in its iris and pupil a startling
transfiguration. These sudden, dangerous natures--_sensitive_ as
they are called--offer many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler
temperament has secured from participation in their angular vagaries.
The fixed and heavy gaze swum, trembled, then glittered in fire; the
small, overcast brow cleared; the trivial and dejected features lit
up; the sad countenance vanished, and in its place appeared a sudden
eagerness, an intense expectancy. "It _is_!" were her words.