It was all new and very strange to a child whose only outlook on life
had been urban and banal. She had never seen a mountain, and nothing
more nearly approaching a forest than the parked groves of the Bois de
Boulogne. Would it be permitted that she should sometimes walk in the
woods of the first Dabney, she asked, with the quaint French twisting
of the phrases that she was never able fully to overcome.

It would certainly be permitted; more, the Major would make her a deed
to as many of the forest acres as she would care to include in her
promenade. By which we see that the second part of Unc' Scipio's
prophecy was finding its fulfilment in the beginning.

How the French-born child fitted into the haphazard household at Deer
Trace Manor, with what struggles she came through the inevitable attack
of homesickness, and how Mammy Juliet and every one else petted and
indulged her, are matters which need not be dwelt on. But we shall
gladly believe that she was too sensible, even at the early and tender
age of ten, to be easily spoiled.

Many foolish things have been said and written about the wax-like
quality of a child's mind; how each new impression effaces the old, and
how character in permanence is not to be looked for until the bones have
stopped growing. Yet who has not known criminals at twelve, and saints
and angels, and wise men and women--in fine, the entire gamut of
humanity--in short frocks or knee-breeches?

Ardea, child of adversity and the Paris ateliers, brought one lasting
memory up out of those early Deer Trace Manor years: she was always
immeasurably older than such infants as Mammy Juliet and Uncle Scipio.