“Well,” said my aunt, “that’s lucky, for I should like it too. But it’s natural and rational that you should like it. And I am very well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be natural and rational.”

“I hope so, aunt.”

“Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,” said my aunt, “would have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. You’ll be worthy of her, won’t you?”

“I hope I shall be worthy of you , aunt. That will be enough for me.”

“It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours didn’t live,” said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, “or she’d have been so vain of her boy by this time, that her soft little head would have been completely turned, if there was anything of it left to turn.” (My aunt always excused any weakness of her own in my behalf, by transferring it in this way to my poor mother.) “Bless me, Trotwood, how you do remind me of her!”