"Of course I wish Catherine to be good," the Doctor said next day;
"but she won't be any the less virtuous for not being a fool. I am
not afraid of her being wicked; she will never have the salt of
malice in her character. She is as good as good bread, as the French
say; but six years hence I don't want to have to compare her to good
bread and butter."
"Are you afraid she will turn insipid? My dear brother, it is I who
supply the butter; so you needn't fear!" said Mrs. Penniman, who had
taken in hand the child's accomplishments, overlooking her at the
piano, where Catherine displayed a certain talent, and going with her
to the dancing-class, where it must be confessed that she made but a
modest figure.
Mrs. Penniman was a tall, thin, fair, rather faded woman, with a
perfectly amiable disposition, a high standard of gentility, a taste
for light literature, and a certain foolish indirectness and
obliquity of character. She was romantic, she was sentimental, she
had a passion for little secrets and mysteries--a very innocent
passion, for her secrets had hitherto always been as unpractical as
addled eggs. She was not absolutely veracious; but this defect was
of no great consequence, for she had never had anything to conceal.
She would have liked to have a lover, and to correspond with him
under an assumed name in letters left at a shop; I am bound to say
that her imagination never carried the intimacy farther than this.
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