You'll be my stepmother, but we mustn't use that word.

They're always said to be cruel; but I don't think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me.
I'm not afraid at all." "My good little Pansy," said Isabel gently, "I shall be ever so kind to you." A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
"Very well then, I've nothing to fear," the child returned with her note of prepared promptitude.

What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded! Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini was further than ever from having folded her wings.

She entered the room with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite.
She drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to a composition of figures already sketched in.

"If you expect me to congratulate you I must beg you to excuse me.