expression; and which, perhaps, they have not felt half so acutely,
these glib and gifted ones, as _I_ did, at the susceptible age of seven,
eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.

She had other slaves of my sex. The five Napoleonic heroes did homage
each after his fashion: the good Major with a kind of sweet fatherly
tenderness touching to behold; the others with perhaps less unselfish
adoration; notably the brave Capitaine Audenis, of the fair waxed
mustache and beautiful brown tail coat, so tightly buttoned with gilt
buttons across his enormous chest, and imperceptible little feet so
tightly imprisoned in shiny tipped female cloth boots, with buttons of
mother-of-pearl; whose hobby was, I believe, to try and compensate
himself for the misfortunes of war by more successful attempts in
another direction. Anyhow he betrayed a warmth that made my small bosom
a Gehenna, until she laughed and snubbed him into due propriety and
shamefaced self-effacement.

It soon became evident that she favored two, at least, out of all this
little masculine world--the Major myself; and a strange trio we made.

Her poor little daughter, the object of her passionate solicitude, a
very clever and precocious child, was the reverse of beautiful, although
she would have had fine eyes but for her red lashless lids. She wore her
thick hair cropped short, like a boy, and was pasty and sallow in
complexion, hollow-cheeked, thick-featured, and overgrown, with long
thin hands and feet, and arms and legs of quite pathetic length and
tenuity; a silent and melancholy little girl, who sucked her thumb
perpetually, and kept her own counsel. She would have to lie in bed for
days together, and when she got well enough to sit up, I (to please her
mother) would read to her _Le Robinson Suisse_, _Sandford and Merton_,