For Mrs.Busk had not the art of rousing people and cheering them, such as Betsy Strouss, my old nurse, had, perhaps from her knowledge of the nursery.

My present landlady might be the more sagacious and sensible woman of the two, and therefore the better adviser; but for keeping one up to the mark she was not in any way equal to Betsy.
There is no ingratitude in saying this, because she herself admitted it.
A clever woman, with a well-balanced mind, knows what she can do, and wherein she fails, better than a man of her own proportion does.

And Mrs.Busk often lamented, without much real mortification, that she had not been "born sympathetic." All the more perhaps for that, she was born sagacious, which is a less pleasing, but, in a bitter pinch, a more really useful, quality.

And before I had time to think much of her defects, in the crowd of more important thought, in she came again, with a letter in her hand, and a sparkle of triumph in her small black eyes.

After looking back along the passage, and closing my door, she saw that my little bay-window had its old-fashioned shutters fastened, and then, in a very low whisper, she said, "What you want to know is here, miss." "Indeed!" I answered, in my usual voice.