joys, and hopes and fears and wonders,
just as you have, is always a good and wholesome feeling to foster on
both your side and theirs.

Our home was in a small town in rather an out-of-the-way part of the
country. It is out of the way still, I believe, as the railways have not
gone very near it, but I know little about it now. It is many years
since I was last there, and I do not think I wish ever to see it again.
I would rather keep my memory's picture of it unchanged.

Our house stood at the outskirts of the little town; in front of it
there stretched a wide heathery common, which extended a mile or two
into the country; and over this common, at certain seasons, the west
wind blew so strongly that it was, we used to say, really like living at
the seaside. The sea was only six or eight miles away; sometimes we
fancied the wind "tasted salt."

The house itself was comfortable and old-fashioned, and had plenty of
rooms in it, which you will allow to have been necessary when I tell you
that I was the youngest of nine children, most, or at least many, of
whom had been brought up at home. My eldest sister was married--she had
always been married, I thought, for I could not remember her anything
else. My other three sisters were all more or less grown up, and the
only brother at all near my own age was away at a boarding-school. So it
came to pass that, though I had so many brothers and sisters, I was
rather a solitary little girl.

But I was not an unhappy child by any means. I had everything I wanted,
even down to a tiny little bedroom all to myself; and though I was not
perhaps indulged as much as some children I see nowadays, I don't think
I was on that account to be pitied. My parents were quiet, and perhaps
rather unusually undemonstrative; and indeed it was not then the fashion
to be very familiar with one's father and mother. We always said "sir"
and "ma'am" to them, and I never thought of entering or leaving the
drawing-room without stopping to curtsey at the door. How would you like
that, children? My father was very particular about such matters, more
so than most, perhaps, from having been many years in the army, where, I
once overheard an old brother-officer say, he had been considered rather
a "martinet," if you know what that means; and my dear mother, who by
herself, perhaps, would have been almost too gentle to keep all her
family in good order, was firm as a rock where any wish of _his_ was
concerned.