88 EGLANTINE OR

 

 

sought to please or to obtain the-approbation of those
who surrounded her. No one in her mother’s house
had any affection or consideration for her. The
friends and servants looked upon her as a mere child.
She was so disobliging and so very insipid that she
often said and did many things out of their place.
In society she was perfectly tiresome. Any sort of
restraint was insupportable to her, and everything
seemed a restraint to her. The customs followed
and received by society appeared to her tyrannical ;
she found politeness troublesome, and did not feel at
her ease but with the uneducated. Far from seeking
the counsel she so much needed, she shunned it,
because she did not feel she had courage and energy
enough to follow it. So when her mother pointed
out the many faults of which she was the unhappy
possessor, she listened with more vexation than repent-
ance. These conversations were always followed by
a fit of ill-humour, which lasted for days together.
She had no command over her temper, and she pre-
ferred to bear with her own faults rather than give
herself the trouble to adopt means for their correction.
Ever since Eglantine was ten years of age she had been
allowed money for her own use, but with all that she
was always badly dressed, and frequently in debt be-