ber, although I
was very greatly amused by them, and could have listened to her for
hours together. My admiration was also strongly excited by the
splendour and varieties of her dresses, her superb trimmings, her
sleeves tied with knots of coloured ribbon, her trains of silk, her
beautiful hats, and I could not understand the purpose for which she
took so much pains to array herself."

I think when we read of Miss Crosbie's arrival at Mr. Fairchild's, and
the time she kept them all waiting for supper while she changed her
gown, we shall be reminded of these early recollections of Mrs.
Sherwood's. A year or two later this quaint Madame came again on a
visit to Stanford; and on this occasion, as Mary tells us, she put it
into the little girl's head, for the first time, to wonder whether she
were pretty or no. "No sooner was dinner over," she says, "than I ran
upstairs to a large mirror to make the important inquiry, and at this
mirror I stood a long time, turning round and examining myself with no
small interest." Madame de Peleve further encouraged her vanity by
making her a present of "a gauze cap of a very gay description." It
must have looked odd and out of place perched on the top of the little
girl's "very long hair and very rosy cheeks." Another of Mme. de
Peleve's not very judicious presents was "a shepherdess hat of pale
blue silver tiffany." But as this hat had to be fastened on with
"large, long corking-pins," it proved "a terrible evil" to its wearer;
which, perhaps, was just as well!

By this time dear brother Marten had been sent away to school at
Reading; but little Lucy was growing old enough to be something of a
playmate; and Margaret, the motherless cousin, had been brought again
to Stanford on a long visit. We can fancy what a delightful companion
to these two small ones Mary must have been. She had left off, for the
time, writing stories, but she was never tired of telling them. In
company she was, in those days, very silent and shy, and much at a loss
for words; but they never failed her when telling her stories to her
little companions. Her head, she says, was full of "fairies, wizards,
enchanters, and all the imagery of heathen gods and goddesses which I
could get out of any book in my father's study," and with these she
wove the most wonderful tales, one story often going on, at every
possible interval, for months together. Her lively imagination "filled
every region of the wild woods at Stanford