The little Amabel, for Eva had been romantic in the naming of her child, was an old-fashioned-looking child in spite of Eva's careful decoration of the little figure in the best childish finery which she could muster.
Little Amabel was reading a child's book at another window.

When Mrs.Zelotes entered she eyed her with the sharpness and inscrutable conclusions therefrom of a kitten, then turned a leaf in her book.
When Mrs.Zelotes had greeted her daughter-in-law and Eva, she looked with disapproval at Amabel.
"When I was a little girl I should have been punished if I hadn't got up and curtsied and said good-afternoon when company came in," she remarked, severely.
Amabel was not a favorite outside of her own family.

People used to stare aghast at her unexpected questions and demands delivered in a shrill clarion as from some summit of childish wisdom, and they said she was a queer child.

She yielded always to command from utter helplessness, but the why of obedience was strongly alert within her.

The child might have been in some subtle and uncanny fashion the offspring of her age and generation instead of her natural parents, she was so unlike either of them, and so much a product of the times, with her meekness and slavishness of weakness and futility, and her unquenchable and unconquerable vitality of dissent.
Ellen adored the little Amabel.