The Whole Family by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Except for Billy, who is a boy and does not count, I am the youngest person in our family; and when I tell you that there are eleven of us -- well, you can dimly imagine the kind of a time I have. Two or three days ago I heard Grandma Evarts say something to the minister about "the down-trodden and oppressed of foreign lands," and after he had gone I asked her what they were. For a wonder, she told me; usually when Billy and I ask questions you would think the whole family had been struck dumb. But this time she answered and I remember every word -- for if ever anything sounded like a description of Billy and me it was what Grandma Evarts said that day. I told her so, too; but, of course, she only looked at me over her spectacles and didn't understand what I meant. Nobody ever does except Billy and Aunt Elizabeth, and they're not much comfort.

Billy is always so busy getting into trouble and having me get him out of it, and feeling sorry for himself, that he hasn't time to sympathize with me. Besides, as I've said before, he's only a boy, and you know what boys are and how they lack the delicate feelings girls have, and how their minds never work when you want them to. As for Aunt Elizabeth, she is lovely sometimes, and the way she remembers things that happened when she was young is simply wonderful. She knows how girls feel, too, and how they suffer when they are like Dr. Denbigh says I am -- very nervous and sensitive and high-strung. But she admitted to me to-day that she had never before really made up her mind whether I am the "sweet, unsophisticated child" she calls me, or what Tom Price says I am, The Eastridge Animated and Undaunted Daily Bugle and Clarion Call.