I shall never forget the quickness with which the two daughters looked
up to their mother. The elder girl, aged eight, had something
especially peculiar in her glance. There was at the same time
revelation and mystery, curiosity and silence, astonishment and apathy
in that look. If there was anything that could be compared to the
speed with which the light of candor flashed from their eyes, it was
the prudent reserve with which both of them closed down, like
shutters, the folds of their white eyelids.
Ye sweet and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to the
age of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is
not a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct
of your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man's
voice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything,
and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, even the
meaning of a word spoken in the air, even the meaning of your mother's
slightest gesture?
There is something of gratitude, something in fact instinctive, in the
predilection of fathers for their daughters and mothers for their
sons.
But the act of setting spies which are in some way inanimate is mere
dotage, and nothing is easier than to find a better plan than that of
the beadle, who took it into his head to put egg-shells in his bed,
and who obtained no other sympathy from his confederate than the
words, "You are not very successful in breaking them.
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