Any one who believed implicitly in heredity might
have been puzzled, perhaps, to account for her. He might
fantastically picture her as making herself out of her ancestors,
using a free hand, picking and choosing what she liked best, with
due care for the effect of combinations; selecting here and there
and modifying, if advisable, a trait of Grandpa or Grandma
Foxwell, of Great-Uncle or Great-Aunt Baxter; borrowing qualities
lavishly from her own gently born and gently bred mother, and
carefully avoiding her respected father's Stock, except, perhaps,
to take a dash of his pluck and an ounce of his persistence. Jed
Morrill remarked of Deacon Baxter once: "When Old Foxy wants
anything he'11 wait till hell freezes over afore he'll give up."
Waitstill had her father's firm chin, but there the likeness
ended. The proud curve of her nostrils, the clear well-opened eye
with its deep fringe of lashes, the earnest mouth, all these came
from the mother who was little more than a dim memory.
Waitstill disdained any vague, dreary, colorless theory of life
and its meaning. She had joined the church at fifteen, more or
less because other girls did and the parson had persuaded her;
but out of her hard life she had somehow framed a courageous
philosophy that kept her erect and uncrushed, no matter how great
her difficulties.
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