was cruel for brought-up people to have nothing
better to go on with. Not that the old lord was a miser neither; but it
was said, and how far true I know not, that he never would forgive your
father for marrying the daughter of a man he hated. And some went so far
as to say that if he could have done it, he would have cut your father
out of all the old family estates. But such a thing never could I
believe of a nobleman having his own flesh and blood.

"But, money or no money, rich or poor, your father and mother, I assure
you, my dear, were as happy as the day was long. For they loved one
another and their children dearly, and they did not care for any
mixing with the world. The Captain had enough of that when put away in
quarters; likewise his wife could do without it better and better at
every birth, though once she had been the very gayest of the gay, which
you never will be, Miss Erema.

"Now, my dear, you look so sad and so 'solid,' as we used to say, that
if I can go on at all, I must have something ready. I am quite an old
nurse now, remember. Hans, go across the square, and turn on the left
hand round the corner, and then three more streets toward the right, and
you see one going toward the left, and you go about seven doors down it,
and then you see a corner with a lamp-post."

"Vilhelmina, I do see de lamp-post at de every corner."

"That will teach you to look more bright, Hans. Then you find a shop
window with three blue bottles, and a green one in the middle."

"How can be any middle to three, without it is one of them?"

"Then let it be two of them. How you contradict me! Take this little
bottle, and the man with a gold braid round a cap, and a tassel with a
tail to it, will fill it for four-pence when you tell him who you are."

"Yes, yes; I do now comprehend. You send me vhere I never find de vay,
because I am in de vay, Vilhelmina!"

I was most thankful to Mrs. Strouss for sending her husband (however
good and kind-hearted he might be) to wander among many shops of
chemists, rather than to keep his eyes on me, while I listened to things
that were almost sure to make me want my eyes my own. My nurse had seen,
as any good nurse must, that, grown and formed as I might be, the nature
of the little child that cries for its mother was in me still.

"It is very sad now," Mrs. Strouss began again, without replying to my
grateful glance; "Miss Erema, it is so sad that I wish I had never begun
with it.