The Flesh-pots of Egypt
edged the worth of her freely given services so readily. Cynthia knew enough of the world for that.
She need not feel dependent on their bounty now. How glad she was of those hours spent with the boys! She was sorry not to be fond of them: she had tried to make them love her, but they were singularly unattractive children, and cold, too. A strange logical habit of thought, a severe impersonal point of view, made it impossible for one to play with them or cuddle them, like other children. They preferred their own strange games, and she had a conviction that they did not approve of her. Indeed, Ralph Waldo Emerson had told Bridget once that his Cousin Cynthia was badly brought up. How could one tell stories to such a boy? Old Joseph was more of a child. But she had taken them out in the summer and got them ready for school in the winter, and done the syllabi and circulars. And now she would keep it up, and sketch and make the lace in the afternoons, and then, there was the summer-house! That old gentleman had liked
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