lithe and restless, buoyant and energetic, unable even to wish for more luxury or more happiness than she possessed, so that her active mind was forced to employ its longings on trifles, as it really had nothing else to desire; her face was round as those faces are which become oval in time; and her bright laughing eyes sparkled like sunbeams at the bare notion of making “aunt Sarah” take either the place of a high-backed chair, or the embroidery frame in a quadrille.  “Do dance,” she repeated.

“My dear child, I know as little of your quadrilles as you do of my country dances and reels.  No, Mabel; I can neither open the spinnet nor dance quadrilles; so you have been twice refused this morning; a novelty, is it not, my dearest Mabel?”

“But why do you not break open the spinnet?  Do break it open, aunt; I want to see the inside of it so much.”

“No, Mabel; the lock is a peculiar one, and could not be broken without defacing the marquetre on the cover, which I should not like to do.  My poor mother was so proud of that cover, and used to dust and polish it with her own hands.”

“What! herself?” exclaimed the pretty Mabel; “why did not her servants do it?”

“Because, my dear, she had but one.”

“But one!  I remember when my poor mamma had none,” sighed Mabel, “and we were so miserable.”

“But not from lack of attendants, I think,” answered Sarah Bond.  “If they are comforts, they are careful ones, and sadly wasteful.  We were never so happy as we were then.  Your mother and I used to set the milk, and mind the poultry, and make the butter, and cultivate the flower-garden, and help to do the house work; and then in the evening we would run in the meadows, come home laden with wild flowers, and tired as we were by alternate work and play, my dear mother would play on that old instrument, and my poor father sing, and we sisters wound up the evening by a merry dance, your mother and myself trying hard which could keep up the dance longest.”

Mabel resumed her embroidery without once speaking.  Sarah Bond laid down the book she had been reading, and moved restlessly about; her manner, when either thoughtful or excited, prevented her features from being disturbed; so her feelings were soothed by wandering from place to place, or table to table; but after a considerable pause, she said—­“I wish you were a little older, Mabel; I wish you to be older, that I might convince you, dear, that it is in vain to expect happiness from the possession of wealth, unless we circulate it, share it with others, and yet do so prudently and watchingly.  Yet, my poor dear father would be very angry if he heard me say that, Mabel.”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted the thoughtless girl, “for he was a miser.”