the winter our walks were shorter and less frequent. My books were
now my chief amusement, though my studies were often interrupted by
a game of romps with my uncle, which too often ended in a quarrel
because he played so roughly; yet long before this I dearly loved
my uncle, and the improvement I made while he was with us was very
great indeed. I could now read very well, and the continual habit of
listening to the conversation of my father and my uncle made me a
little woman in understanding; so that my father said to him, "James,
you have made my child quite a companionable little being."

My father often left me alone with my uncle; sometimes to write his
sermons; sometimes to visit the sick, or give counsel to his poor
neighbours: then my uncle used to hold long conversations with me,
telling me how I should strive to make my father happy, and endeavour
to improve myself when he was gone:--now I began justly to understand
why he had taken such pains to keep my father from visiting my
mother's grave, that grave which I often stole privately to look at;
but now never without awe and reverence, for my uncle used to tell
me what an excellent lady my mother was, and I now thought of her as
having been a real mamma, which before seemed an ideal something,
no way connected with life. And he told me that the ladies from the
Manor-House, who sate in the best pew in the church, were not so
graceful, and the best women in the village were not so good, as was
my sweet mamma; and that if she had lived, I should not have been
forced to pick up a little knowledge from him, a rough sailor, or to
learn to knit and sew of Susan, but that she would have taught me all
lady-like fine works and delicate behaviour and perfect manners, and
would have selected for me proper books, such as were most fit to
instruct my mind, and of which he nothing knew. If ever in my life I
shall have any proper sense of what is excellent or becoming in the
womanly character, I owe it to these lessons of my rough unpolished
uncle; for, in telling me what my mother would have made me, he taught
me what to wish to be; and when, soon after my uncle left us, I was
introduced to the ladies at the Manor-House, instead of hanging down
my head with shame, as I should have done before my uncle came, like a
little village rustic, I tried to speak distinctly, with ease, and a
modest gentleness, as my uncle had said my mother used to do; instead
of hanging down my head