Read "The Literary Sense" by Edith Nesbit online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
FROM her very earliest teens every man she met had fallen at her feet. Her father in paternal transports -- dignified and symbolic as the adoration of the Magi, uncles in forced unwilling tribute, cousins according to their kind, even brothers, resentful of their chains yet still enslaved, lovers by the score, persons disposed to marriage by the half-dozen.
And she had smiled on them all, because it was so nice to be loved, and if one could make those who loved happy by smiling, why, smiles were cheap! Not cheap like inferior soap, but like the roses from a full June garden.