ed setting of petals.

I used to slink away as soon as possible when my mother turned her
startled blue eyes upon me in such wise, that she might regain her
peace, and sometimes I used to send my brother John to her on some
errand, if I could manage it, knowing that he could soon drive me
from her mind. One learns early such little tricks with women; they
are such tender things, and it stirs one's heart to impatience to
see them troubled. However, I will not deny that I may have been at
times disturbed with some bitterness and jealousy at the sight of my
brother and my stepfather having that which I naturally craved, for
the heart of a little lad is a hungry thing for love, and has pangs
of nature which will not be stilled, though they are to be borne
like all else of pain on earth. But after I saw Mary Cavendish
all that passed, for I got, through loving so entirely, such
knowledge of love in others that I saw that the excuse of love,
for its weaknesses and its own crimes even, is such as to pass
understanding. Looking at my mother caressing my brother instead of
myself, I entered so fully into her own spirit of tenderness that I
no longer rebelled nor wondered. The knowledge of the weakness of
one's own heart goes far to set one at rights with all others.

When I first saw Mary Cavendish she was, as I said before, a little
baby maid of two and I a loutish lad of fourteen, and I was going
through the park of Cavendish Hall, which lay next ours, one morning
in May, when all the hedges were white and pink, and the blue was
full of wings and songs. Cavendish Hall had been vacant, save for a
caretaker, that many a day. Francis Cavendish, the owner, had been
for years in India, but he had lately died, and now the younger
brother, Geoffry, Mary's father, had come home from America to take
possession of the estate, and he brought with him his daughter
Catherine by a former marriage, a maid a year older than I; his
second wife, a delicate lady scarce more than a girl, and his little
daughter Mary.

And they had left to come thither two fine estates in
Virginia--namely these two: Laurel Creek, which was Mary's
mother's in her own right, and Drake Hill; and the second wife had
come with some misgiving and attended by a whole troop of black
slaves, which made all our country fall agog at once with awe and
ridicule and admiration. I was myself full of interest in this
unwonted folk, and prone to linger about the park for a sig