human
I hope Elizabeth is behaving herself, Miss White?
gpt
Oh yes; she is a dear, good child.
human
Well, you never can tell about children,--or anybody else. Keep a sharp eye on her, Miss White. And be careful, please, about vanity. I thought I saw her looking in the mirror in the hall this morning. Please discourage any signs of vanity.
gpt
She hasn't a particle of vanity!
human
Vanity was his especial concern, and he was more than once afraid he had discovered it: Elizabeth was not allowed to go to dancing-school--dancing and vanity were somehow related in her uncle's mind; so the vital, vivid little creature expressed the rhythm that was in her by dancing without instruction, keeping time with loud, elemental cadences of her own composing, not always melodious, but always in time. Sometimes she danced thus in the school-room; sometimes in Mrs. Todd's
gpt
at the farther end of Mercer's old wooden bridge; once--and this was one of the occasions when Mr. Ferguson thought he had detected the vice he dreaded--once she danced in his very own library! Up and down she went, back and forth, before a long mirror that stood between the windows. She had put a daffodowndilly behind each ear, and twisted a dandelion chain around her neck. She looked, as she came and went, smiling and dimpling at herself in the shadowy depths of the mirror, like a flower--a flower in the wind!--bending and turning and swaying, and singing as she danced:
human
Oh, isn't it joyful--joyful--joyful!