also, speaking as the
world speaks, and not as Wordsworth's "simple child" spoke. But let me
rather use the "little maid's" reckoning, and say that I have, rather
than that I had, a sister. "Her grave is green, it may be seen." She
peeped into the world, and we called her Alice; then she went away
again and took my mother with her. It was my first great, bitter
grief.

I remember well the day when I was led with much mysterious solemnity
to see my new sister. She was then a week old.

"You must be quiet, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, a new member of our
establishment, "and not on no account make no noise to disturb your
dear, pretty mamma."

Repressed by this accumulation of negatives, as well as by the size
and dignity of Mrs. Bundle's outward woman, I went a-tiptoe under her
large shadow to see my new acquisition.

Very young children are not always pretty, but my sister was beautiful
beyond the wont of babies. It is an old simile, but she was like a
beautiful painting of a cherub. Her little face wore an expression
seldom seen except on a few faces of those who have but lately come
into this world, or those who are about to go from it. The hair that
just gilded the pink head I was allowed to kiss was one shade paler
than that which made a great aureole on the pillow about the pale face
of my "dear, pretty" mother.

Years afterwards--in Belgium--I bought an old mediaeval painting of a
Madonna. That Madonna had a stiffness, a deadly pallor, a thinness of
face incompatible with strict beauty. But on the thin lips there was a
smile for which no word is lovely enough; and in the eyes was a pure
and far-seeing look, hardly to be imagined except by one who painted
(like Fra Angelico) upon his knees. The background (like that of many
religious paintings of the date) was gilt. With such a look and such a
smile my mother's face shone out of the mass of her golden hair the
day she died. For this I bought the picture; for this I keep it still.

But to go back.

I liked Mrs. Bundle. I had taken to her from the evening when she
arrived in a red shawl, with several bandboxes. My affection for her
was established next day, when she washed my face before dinner. My
own nurse was bony, her hands were all knuckles, and she washed my
face as she scrubbed the nursery floor on Saturdays. Mrs. Bundle's
plump palms were like pincushions, and she washed my face as if it had
been a baby's.

On the evening of the day when I first saw Sis