Penniman had never had a lover, but her brother, who was very shrewd, understood her turn of mind."When Catherine is about seventeen," he said to himself, "Lavinia will try and persuade her that some young man with a moustache is in love with her.It will be quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever be in love with Catherine.But Lavinia will take it up, and talk to her about it; perhaps, even, if her taste for clandestine operations doesn't prevail with her, she will talk to me about it.Catherine won't see it, and won't believe it, fortunately for her peace of mind;poor Catherine isn't romantic."
She was a healthy, well-grown child, without a trace of her mother's beauty.She was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle countenance.The most that had ever been said for her was that she had a "nice" face; and, though she was an heiress, no one had ever thought of regarding her as a belle.Her father's opinion of her moral purity was abundantly justified; she was excellently, imperturbably good; affectionate, docile, obedient, and much addicted to speaking the truth.In her younger years she was a good deal of a romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about one's heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton.She never, that I know of, stole raisins out of the pantry; but she devoted her pocket money to the purchase of cream cakes.As regards this, however, a critical attitude would be inconsistent with a candid reference to the early annals of any biographer.Catherine was decidedly not clever; she was not quick with her book, nor, indeed, with anything else.She was not abnormally deficient, and she mustered learning enough to acquit herself respectably in conversation with her contemporaries-among whom it must be avowed, however, that she occupied a secondary place.It is well known that in New York it is possible for a young girl to occupy a primary one.Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background.She was extremely fond of her father, and very much afraid of him; she thought him the cleverest and handsomest and most celebrated of men.The poor girl found her account so completely in the exercise of her affections that the little tremor of fear that mixed itself with her filial passion gave the thing an extra relish rather than blunted its edge.Her deepest desire was to please him, and her conception of happiness was to know that she had succeeded in pleasing him.She had never succeeded beyond a certain point.Though, on the whole, he was very kind to her, she was perfectly aware of this, and to go beyond the point in question seemed to her really something to live for.What she could not know, of course, was that she disappointed him, though on three or four occasions the doctor had been almost frank about it.She grew up peacefully and prosperously; but at the age of eighteen, Mrs.Penniman had not made a clever woman of her.