Italian? There was a sympathy taken out of my life. I believe I have
more of the Italian nature than the English, and I know my mother's
presence would be priceless to me now that I could talk with her. What
unsatisfactory creatures we are as children, so imperfect, so deficient!
It is worse with boys than with girls. Compare, for instance, the twine
with boys often. What coarse, awkward, unruly lumps of boisterousness
youngsters mostly are at that age! I dislike boys, and more than ever
when I remember myself at that stage. What an insensible, ungrateful,
brainless, and heartless brat I was!'

'You must be wrong in one respect,' she returned, watching a large
butterfly. 'You could not have been brainless.'

'Oh, the foundation of tolerable wits was there, no doubt; but it is
just that undeveloped state that irritates me. Suppose I were now ten
years old, and that glorious butterfly before me; should I not leap at
it and stick a pin through it--young savage? Precisely what a Hottentot
boy would do, except that he would be free from the apish folly of
pretending a scientific interest, not really existing. I rejoice to have
lived out of my boyhood; I would not go through it again for anything
short of a thousand years of subsequent maturity.'

She just glanced at him, a light of laughter in her eyes. She was
abandoning herself to the pleasure of hearing him speak.

'That picture of my mother,' he pursued, dropping his voice again, 'does
not do her justice. Even at twelve years old--(she died when I was
twelve)--I could not help seeing and knowing how beautiful she was. I
have thought of her of late more than I ever did; sometimes I suffer a
passion of grief that one so beautiful and lovable has gone and left a