The one thing that wearied me above and more than all others, was the
changeless monotony of my existence; every day a tiresome repetition
of another, which forced me to attribute little or no value to time.

I was not old enough to be sent to school, although I had entered upon
what is called the years of discretion, but my father's wife had a
high-bred fear, lest in sending me to an educational establishment I
should indulge my uncouth tendencies by cultivating unfashionable
acquaintances, that in after years, might possibly, in some remote,
indefinite way, reflect upon her own unimpeachable dignity.

There came a day, however, when exacting circumstances obliged her to
look upon the prospect of placing me at school with a more impartial
eye. A change was creeping, slowly, but surely, into our lives: hardly
for the better in one way, and yet, in the end, I must acknowledge,
that to it I owe much of the happiness I have ever known.

Whether or not my obdurate step-mother was in reality as susceptible
as a woman should be, I am not free to say; but when, after a few
years of wedded life, the prospect of maternity began to grow less
shadowy and more reliable, her heart did seem to swell at rare
intervals with a real, or assumed pity for the little woman who had
been left to wander about motherless and friendless, spending her
young life, unheeded, among the cheerless apartments of her own
father's house.

While this new phase of existence was unfolding itself before her
eyes, like the lava from a long-slumbering volcano, a kind word or
deed was born now and then of the momentary influence. She would
stroke my head with a gesture of repenting, amending tenderness, give