Dr. Maybright had eight children, and the sweetest and most attractive
wife of any man in the neighborhood. He had a considerable country
practice, was popular among his patients, and he and his were adored by
the villagers, for the Maybrights had lived in the neighborhood of the
little village of Tyrsley Dale for many generations. Dr. Maybright's
father had ministered to the temporal wants of the fathers and mothers
of these very same villagers; and his father before him had also been in
the profession, and had done his best for the inhabitants of Tyrsley
Dale. It was little wonder, therefore, that the simple folks who lived
in the little antiquated village on the borders of one of our great
southern moors should have thought that to the Maybrights alone of the
whole race of mankind had been given the art of healing.

For three or four generations the Maybright family had lived at Sleepy
Hollow, which was the name of the square gray house, with its large
vegetable garden, its sheltered clump of forest trees, and its
cultivated flower and pleasure grounds. Here, in the old nursery, Polly
had first opened her bright blue-black eyes; in this house Dr.
Maybright's eight children had lived happily, and enjoyed all the
sunshine of the happiest of happy childhoods to the full. They were all
high-spirited and fearless; each child had a certain amount of
individuality. Perhaps Polly was the naughtiest and the most peculiar;
but her little spurt of insubordination speedily came to nothing, for
mother, without ever being angry, or ever saying anything that could
hurt Polly's sensitive feelings, had always, with firm and gentle hand,
put an extinguisher on them.

Mother was really, then, the life of the house. She was young to have
such tall slips of daughters, and such little wild pickles of sons; and
she was so pretty and so merry, and in such ecstasies over a picnic, and