Good-night.
(The door leading to the condemned cells of the Dormitory closes
on LILY, ISABEL, FLORRIE, and other diminutive and submissive
victims.)
JESSIE (after a pause). Why, I thought you were so fond of Miss
Edgeworth.
L. So I am, and so you ought all to be. I can read her over and
over again, without ever tiring; there's no one whose every page
is so full, and so delightful, no one who brings you into the
company of pleasanter or wiser people; no one who tells you more
truly how to do right. And it is very nice, in the midst of a wild
world, to have the very ideal of poetical justice done always to
one's hand:--to have everybody found out, who tells lies; and
everybody decorated with a red riband, who doesn't; and to see the
good Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, receiving a grand
ovation from an entire dinner party disturbed for the purpose; and
poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses purple jars instead of
new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her bottle.
But it isn't life: and, in the way children might easily
understand it, it isn't morals.
JESSIE. How do you mean we might understand it?
L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right was to be
done mainly because one was always rewarded for doing it.
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