means colourless or uneventful. The child had displayed a grievous
capacity for remaining unimpressed by even the best-weighed opinions of
her protector. She was also appallingly fluent in and partial to the
idioms and metaphors of revealed religion,--a circumstance that would
not infrequently cause the sensitive to shudder.

Thus, when she chose to call her largest and least sightly doll the Holy
Ghost, the ingenuity of those about her was taxed to rebuke her in ways
that would be effective without being harsh. It was felt, too, that her
offence had been but slightly mitigated when she called the same doll,
thereafter, "Thou son of perdition and shedder of innocent blood." Not
until this disfigured effigy became Bishop Wright, and the remaining
dolls his more or less disobedient wives, was it felt that she had
approached even remotely the plausible and the decorous.

A glance at some of the verses she was from time to time constrained to
learn will perhaps indicate the line of her transgressions, and yet
avert a disclosure of details that were often tragic. She was taught
these verses from a little old book bound in the gaudiest of Dutch gilt
paper, as if to relieve the ever-present severity of the text and the
distressing scenes portrayed in the illustrating copperplates. For
example, on a morning when there had been hasty words at breakfast,
arising from circumstances immaterial to this narrative, she might be
made to learn:--

"That I did not see Frances just now I am glad,
For Winifred says she looked sullen and sad.
When I ask her the reason, I know very well
That Frances will blush the true reason to tell.