"
"No, no, Amy," said Hester, a little conscience-stricken, "you can't
have any of mine. I have none to spare. You will rather brush some into
me, Amy. But do what you like with my hair."
As Amy lovingly combed and brushed the long, wavy overflow of Hester's
beauty, Hester tried to make her understand that she must not think of
good-temper and crossness merely as things that could be put into her
and taken out of her. She tried to make her see that nothing really our
own can ever be taken from us by any will or behavior of another; that
Amy had had a large supply of good-temper laid ready to her hand, but
that it was not hers until she had made it her own by choosing and
willing to be good-tempered when she was disinclined--holding it fast
with the hand of determination when the hand of wrong would snatch it
from her.
"Because I have a book on my shelves," she said, "it is not therefore
mine; when I have read and understood it, then it is a little mine; when
I love it and do what it tells me, then it is altogether mine: it is
like that with a good temper: if you have it sometimes, and other times
not, then it is not yours; it lies in you like that book on my table--a
thing priceless were it your own, but as it is, a thing you can't keep
even against your poor weak old aunts.
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