It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how
much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours
of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate
charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective
even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied.
For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite
suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them,
so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness
in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations.

They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond
of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a
graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged.
The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth,
for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself,
as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it.
They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their
poor protectress; I mean--though they got their lessons better
and better, which was naturally what would please her most--
in the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her;
reading her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades,
pouncing out at her, in disguises, as animals and historical
characters, and above all astonishing her by the "pieces" they
had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite.
I should never get to the bottom--were I to let myself go even now--
of the prodigious private commentary, all under still more
private correction, with which, in these days, I overscored
their full hours. They had shown me from the first a facility
for everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start,
achieved remarkable flights. They got their little tasks