Francis, the baby, was two
years old, and the pet of every one but Aunt Grace, who never did
like children. But he was so sweet a little fellow, that even the
stiff maiden would bend toward him now and then, conscious of a
warmer heart-beat. George, who boasted of being ten--quite an
advanced age, in his estimation--might almost be called a thorn in
the flesh to Aunt Grace, whose nice sense of propriety and decorum
he daily outraged by rudeness and want of order. George was boy all
over, and a strongly-marked specimen of his class--"as like his
father, when at his age, as one pea to another," Aunt Grace would
say, as certain memories of childhood presented themselves with more
than usual vividness. The boy was generally too much absorbed in his
own purposes to think about the peculiar claims to respect of age,
sex, or condition. Almost from the time he could toddle about the
carpeted floor, had Aunt Grace been trying to teach him what she
called manners. But he was never an apt scholar in her school. If he
mastered the A B C to-day, most probably on her attempt to advance
him to-morrow into his a-b ab's, he had wholly forgotten the
previous lesson.
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