Ah! you don't know how strongly I was tempted to give her a kiss, just now, when she begged so hard for it.

But what _shall_ I do with her, Adelaide ?--have you no suggestion to make ?" "Indeed, I don't know what to say, Horace; I shouldn't like to give up to her, if I were you; it does seem as if you ought to conquer her, and if you don't do it now, I do not believe you ever will." "Yes, that is just it," he said.

"I have sometimes felt sorry for having begun the struggle, and yet perhaps it is just as well, since it must have come sooner or later.

Ten years hence I shall want to take her occasionally to the theatre or opera, or perhaps now and then to a ball, and unless I can eradicate these ridiculously strict notions she has got into her head, she will be sure to rebel then, when she will be rather too old to punish, at least in the same way in which I might punish her now." "A thought has just struck me, Horace," said Adelaide suddenly.
"Well, what is it ?" he asked.
Adelaide hesitated.

She felt some little sympathy for Elsie, and did not quite like to propose a measure which she knew would give her great pain; but at length she said, in a half-regretful tone-- "I think, Horace, that Aunt Chloe upholds Elsie in her obstinacy, and makes her think herself a martyr to principle, for you know she has the same strange notions, which they both learned from the old housekeeper, Mrs.Murray, who was an old-fashioned Presbyterian, of the strictest sort; and now, as Elsie is still so young, it seems to me it might be _possible_ to change her views, if she were entirely removed from all such influences.