tics, the "young master" of the
farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly antic, assuming a sort
of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt not, on such a baby as I
was.

Gregory was three years older than I. Aunt Fanny was always kind to him
in deed and in action, but she did not often think about him, she had
fallen so completely into the habit of being engrossed by me, from the
fact of my having come into her charge as a delicate baby. My father
never got over his grudging dislike to his stepson, who had so innocently
wrestled with him for the possession of my mother's heart. I mistrust
me, too, that my father always considered him as the cause of my mother's
death and my early delicacy; and utterly unreasonable as this may seem, I
believe my father rather cherished his feeling of alienation to my
brother as a duty, than strove to repress it. Yet not for the world
would my father have grudged him anything that money could purchase. That
was, as it were, in the bond when he had wedded my mother. Gregory was
lumpish and loutish, awkward and ungainly, marring whatever he meddled
in, and many a hard word and sharp scolding did he get from the people
about the farm, who hardly waited till my father's back was turned before
they rated the stepson. I am ashamed--my heart is sore to think how I
fell into the fashion of the family, and slighted my poor orphan step-
brother. I don't think I ever scouted him, or was wilfully ill-natured
to him; but the habit of being considered in all things, and being
treated as something uncommon and superior, made me insolent in my
prosperity, and I exacted more than Gregory was always willing to grant,
and then, irritated, I sometimes repeated the disparaging words I had
heard others use with regard to him, without fully understanding their
meaning. Whether he did or not I cannot tell. I am afraid he did. He
used to turn silent and quiet--sullen and sulky, my father thought it:
stupid, aunt Fanny used to call it. But every one said he was stupid and
dull, and this stupidity and dullness grew upon him. He would sit
without speaking a word, sometimes, for hours; then my father would bid
him rise and do some piece of work, maybe, about the farm. And he would
take three or four tellings before he would go. When we were sent to
school, it was all the same. He could never be made to remember his
lessons; the school-master grew weary of scolding and flogging, and at
last