The Uncle of an Angel by Thomas A. Janvier

"Poor dear mamma and I did not have a harsh word for years, Uncle Hutchinson," Miss Lee explained, in the course of the somewhat animated discussion that arose in consequence of Mr. Port's declaration that a part of their summer would be passed, in accordance with his usual custom, at the White Sulphur, and of Dorothy's declaration that she did not want to go there. This, her first summer in America, was the third summer after Mrs. Lee's translation; and since Dorothy had come into colors again she naturally wanted to make the most of them. "No, not a single harsh word did we ever have. We always agreed perfectly, you know; or if mamma thought differently at first she always ended by seeing that my view of the matter was the right one. The only serious difference that I remember since I was quite a little girl was that last autumn in Paris; when I had everything so perfectly arranged for a delightful winter in St. Petersburg, and when mamma was completely set in her own mind that we must go to the south of France. Her cough was getting very bad then, you know, and she said that a winter in Russia certainly would kill her. I don't think it would have killed her, at least not especially; but the doctor backed mamma up -- and said some horrid things to me in his polite French way -- and declared that St. Petersburg was not even to be thought of.

"And so, when I found that they were both against me that way, of course I sacrificed my own feelings and told mamma that I would do just what she wanted. And mamma cried and kissed me, and said that I was an angel: wasn't it sweet of her? To be sure, though, she was having her own way, and I wasn't; and I think that I was an angel myself, for I did want to go to Russia dreadfully. After all, as things turned out, we might almost as well have gone; for poor dear mamma, you know, died that winter anyway. But I'm glad I did what I could to please her, and that she called me an angel for doing it. Don't you think that I was one? And don't you feel, sir, that it is something of an honor to be an angel's uncle?