Eustace once gave two black eyes to our rude cousin, Harry
Merricourt, for laughing when he said no one was as beautiful as the
Grandmother, and though I am an old woman myself, I think he was
right. She was like a little fairy, upright and trim, with dark
flashing eyes, that never forgot how to laugh, and snowy curls on her
brow.

I believe that the dear old lady made herself ill by nursing us two
children day and night when we had the smallpox. She had a stroke,
and died before my father could be fetched from London; but I knew
nothing of all that; I only grieved, and wondered that she did not
come to me, till at last the maid who was nursing me told me flatly
that the old lady was dead. I think that afterwards we were sent
down to a farmer's house by the sea, to be bathed and made rid of
infection; and that the pleasure of being set free from our sick
chambers and of playing on the shore drove from our minds for the
time our grief for the good grandma, though indeed I dream of her
often still, and of the old rooms and gardens at Walwyn, though I
have never seen them since.

When we were quite well and tolerably free from pock-marks, my father
took us to London with him, and there Eustace was sent to school at
Westminster; while I, with little Berry, had a tutor to teach us
Latin and French, and my mother's waiting-maid instructed me in
sewing and embroidery. As I grew older I had masters in dancing and
the spinnet, and my mother herself was most careful of my deportment.
Likewise she taught me such practices of our religion as I had not
learnt from my grandmother, and then it was I found that I was to be
brought up differently from Eustace and the others. I cried at