"You jest spoil that young one, Fanny," she would say to her sister.
"You can do jest as you are a mind to with your own young ones when you get them, but you can let mine alone.

It's none of your business what her father and me give her to eat; you don't buy it," Ellen's mother would retort.

There was the utmost frankness of speech between the two sisters.

Neither could have been in the slightest doubt as to what the other thought of her, for it was openly proclaimed to her a dozen times a day, and the conclusion was never complimentary.

Ellen learned very early to form her own opinions of character from her own intuition, otherwise she would have held her aunt and mother in somewhat slighting estimation, and she loved them both dearly.