On little Aggie's slate the figures were yet to be written; which sufficiently accounted for the difference of the two surfaces.

Both the girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life in their future; but while one, with its neck in a pink ribbon, had no consciousness but that of being fed from the hand with the small sweet biscuit of unobjectionable knowledge, the other struggled with instincts and forebodings, with the suspicion of its doom and the far-borne scent, in the flowery fields, of blood.
"Oh Nanda, she's my best friend after three or four others." "After so many ?" Mr.Longdon laughed.

"Don't you think that's rather a back seat, as they say, for one's best ?" "A back seat ?"--she wondered with a purity! "If you don't understand," said her companion, "it serves me right, as your aunt didn't leave me with you to teach you the slang of the day." "The 'slang' ?"--she again spotlessly speculated.
"You've never even heard the expression?
I should think that a great compliment to our time if it weren't that I fear it may have been only the name that has been kept from you." The light of ignorance in the child's smile was positively golden.

"The name ?" she again echoed.
She understood too little--he gave it up.

"And who are all the other best friends whom poor Nanda comes after ?" "Well, there's my aunt, and Miss Merriman, and Gelsomina, and Dr.
Beltram." "And who, please, is Miss Merriman ?" "She's my governess, don't you know ?--but such a deliciously easy governess." "That, I suppose, is because she has such a deliciously easy pupil.