couldn't walk, and Delight, bein' stronger, must go ahead of her and make a pretty path for her to foller when she got big enough. I told her jest how hard it wuz for the baby to be put here so helpless in the midst of sorrows and troubles and dangers, and how we must all of us be jest as good to her as we could out of pity for the dear little creeter.
So I rousted up Delight's pity for her, and she wuz all animated about helpin' her, and I told her the baby had come to be a great blessin' and comfort to her, but she must take great care of it and not let it get harmed in any way, for it would need her care and love for a long time.
And don't you see that the fact of Delight havin' to do a kindness to the baby, havin' to take thought and study out good things to do for her, wuz the surest way to make her love her? For it is a great fact in our human nater that you can't love them you have injured in any way, and at the same time if you have ever been good to anybody you always feel softer toward 'em and more mellerer.
Curious, hain't it? But it is a fact, and I spoze the reason on't is you have sort o' lowered yourself in your own estimation by doing a onkind act, and so in order to satisfy your mental criticism on yourself and try to make it right, you lay hold and bring up all the faults of that person you can to justify your own act, and so you keep on that mental naggin' at 'em, that oncomfortable sort of a feelin' toward 'em makes you restless and oneasy, and you are glad every time you can stand justified to your own consciousness by ketchin' 'em in a bad act—hain't that so, now? Why, I know it is, so I made sure Delight shouldn't begin wrong. For when
