She heard no bad language, saw nothing improper, listened to no worse conversation than any of the other children at Miss Rutherford's.

Even at her present age of ten it never occurred to her to inquire how her mother supported herself.

The charges brought by Harriet Smales conveyed to her mind no conception of their true meaning; they were to her mere general calumnies of vague application.
Her mother "bad," indeed! If so, then what was the meaning of goodness?
For poor Lotty's devotion to the child had received its due reward herein, that she was loved as purely and intensely as any most virtuous parent could hope to be; so little regard has nature for social codes, so utterly is she often opposed to all the precepts of respectability.
This phrase of Harriet's was the very first breathing against her mother's character that Ida had ever heard.

Lotty had invented fables, for the child's amusement, about her own earlier days.

The legend was, that her husband had died about a year after marriage.