Chapter VIII: Part 8

But really, after all, I can’t stop till I tell you how much that child knows. I am not certain that it would do to tell state secrets before her; for though she can’t talk, and though she sits on the floor, playing with her toys, I sometimes feel, when she drops them, and looks up with her sweet, earnest little face, as if she had lived another life somewhere, and her grown-up-soul had come back and crept into that little baby’s body. Sometimes, when I look at her, I wish, oh! so much, that I could always keep all sorrow, and all suffering from her, and make her whole life happy; but this cannot be. Besides, I know, that He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will surely care for little motherless Effie.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.