roctor coming at full speed
down the street. Seeing the open door the young man darted in, and
rushed up the staircase. Silence for a few moments, and then peeping
over the banisters the youth said in an urgent whisper, "Is he gone, is
he gone?"

Now, the humour of the situation was that whilst he was so eager to
escape from the proctor, nothing but a thin partition separated him from
the Vice-Chancellor in his study.

We can picture to ourselves the butler's "Do you wish to see the
Vice-Chancellor, sir?" and the hasty exit!

Meanwhile the child Bessie returned to her poems, her songs, her
improvisings at the piano, to lessons in the schoolroom, to that
terrible frame and the leaden type and raised figures, and the sums
which would not "come right"; to the brothers and sisters and the happy
home life. But she too had seen something of the great world lying on
the outside of Oxford, and could refer back to "my visit to the North."

An old friend of the family remembers the first sight of Bessie as a
girl of about twelve years old. She was in the Magdalen Gardens with a
nurse and the little brother Tom, the youngest boy, of whom she was
always very fond. She was standing apart on the grass; standing
peaceful, motionless, with a sweet still face, and all the sad
suggestion of the large darkened glasses that encased her eyes. The
little boy picked daisies and took them to her and showed her the gold
in the centre. She smiled as she took them, and her slender fingers
fluttered about them. And the children, the flowers, the sunlight, and
those beautiful gardens in the early summer, made a picture in which
this friend always loved to enshrine her memory of "Little Blossom."

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Published by B. Fellowes, Ludgate Street, 1841.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT THE PROPHETESS FORESAW

"Cette loi sainte, il faut s'y conformer
Et la voici, toute ame y peut atteindre:
Ne rien hair, mon enfant; tout aimer
Ou tout plaindre."--VICTOR HUGO.

The early summer of 1838 was spent by the Vice-Chancellor and his family
at Malvern. Bessie greatly enjoyed long walks on the hills, but either
from over fatigue, or because the air was too keen for her, she began to
suffer at that time from what she always spoke of as "my long headache."
It was a headache that lasted many months and caused the parents almost
as much suffering as the child. On their return to Oxford the family
doctor was called in