and the good mother who had helped to make her so affectionate. A
magnificent footman in scarlet came behind her, with the splendidest pair
of calves, in white stockings, that we ever beheld. He looked somehow like
a gigantic fairy, personating for his little lady's sake the grandest kind
of footman he could think of; and his calves he seemed to have made out of
a couple of the biggest chaise-lamps in the possession of the godmother of
Cinderella. With or without her big footman, the little Princess could
have rambled safely in the grounds which her predecessors had made for
her, could have fed the ducks which swam in the round pond before her
palace windows, could have drunk from the curious little mineral well,
where, in Miss Thackeray's 'Old Kensington,' Frank Raban met Dolly
Vanburgh, or peeped out of the little side gate where the same Dolly came
face to face with the culprits George and Rhoda. The future owner of all
could have easily strayed down the alleys among the Dutch elms which King
William brought, perhaps saplings, from the Boomjees, as far as the oak
that tradition says King Charles set in the form of an acorn taken from
his leafy refuge at Boscobel."

The Duke of Kent had brought an old soldier-servant, called Stillman, and
established him, with his wife and family, in a cottage in one of the
Kensington lanes. It is said the Duke had recommended this former retainer
to the care of the Duchess, and that she and her daughter were in the
habit of visiting and caring for the family, in which there were a sickly
little boy and girl.

An event happened in 1828 to the household in Kensington Palace which was
of importance to all. It was a joyful event, and the preparations for the
royal wedding, with the gala in which the preliminaries culminated, must
have formed an era in the quiet young life into which a startling
announcement and its fulfilment had broken, filling the hours of the short