first time.

Her interest in my harbours and islands was marked; she did not
smile; she asked questions about my peninsulas which were
intelligent and pertinent. I was even persuaded at last to leave
my creations and to walk with her towards the village. I was
pleased with her voice, her refinements, her dress, which was
more delicate, and her manners, which were more easy, than what I
was accustomed to, We had some very pleasant conversation, and
when we parted I had the satisfaction of feeling that our
intercourse had been both agreeable to me and instructive to her.
I told her that I should be glad to tell her more on a future
occasion; she thanked me very gravely, and then she laughed a
little. I confess I did not see that there was anything to laugh
at. We parted on warm terms of mutual esteem, but I little
thought that this sympathetic Quakerish lady was to become my
mother.

CHAPTER X

I SLEPT in a little bed in a corner of the room, and my Father in
the ancestral four-poster nearer to the door. Very early one
bright September morning at the close of my eleventh year, my
Father called me over to him. I climbed up, and was snugly
wrapped in the coverlid; and then we held a momentous
conversation. It began abruptly by his asking me whether I should
like to have a new mamma. I was never a sentimentalist, and I
therefore answered, cannily, that that would depend on who she
was. He parried this, and announced that, anyway, a new mamma was
coming; I was sure to like her. Still in a noncommittal mood, I
asked: 'Will she go with me to the back of the lime-kiln?' This
question caused my Father a great bewilderment. I had to explain
that the ambition of my life was to go up behind the lime-kiln on
the top of the hill that hung over Barton, a spot which was
forbidden ground, being locally held one of extreme danger. 'Oh!
I daresay she will,' my Father then said, 'but you must guess who
she is.' I guessed one or two of the less comely of the female
'saints', and, this embarrassing my Father,--since the second I
mentioned was a married woman who kept a sweet-shop in the
village,--he cut my inquiries short by saying, 'It is Miss
Brightwen.'

So far so good, and I was well pleased. But unfortunately I
remembered that it was my duty to testify 'in season and out of
season'. I therefore asked, with much earnestness, 'But, Papa, is
she one of the Lord's children?' He replied, with gravity, that
she was. 'Has she taken up