till they come properly into my
story--now and then I try to look back like that, and I get a strange
feeling that it is all there, if only I could keep hold of the thread,
as it were. But I cannot; it melts into a mist, and the very first thing
I _can_ clearly remember stands out the same again.

This is it.

I see myself--those looking backs always are like pictures; you seem to
be watching yourself, even while you feel it is yourself--I see myself,
a little trot of a girl, in a pale gray merino frock, with a muslin
pinafore covering me nearly all over, and a broad sash of Roman colours,
with a good deal of pale blue in it (I have the sash still, so it isn't
much praise to my memory to know all about _it_), tied round my waist,
running fast down the short steep garden path to where granny is
standing at the gate. I go faster and faster, beginning to get a little
frightened as I feel I can't stop myself. Then granny calls out--

'Take care, take care, my darling,' and all in a minute I feel
safe--caught in her arms, and held close. It is a lovely feeling. And
then I hear her say--

'My little girlie must not try to run so fast alone. She might have
fallen and hurt herself badly if granny had not been there.'

There is to me a sort of parable, or allegory, in that first thing I can
remember, and I think it will seem to go on and fit into all my life,
even if I live to be as old as grandmamma is now. It is like feeling
that there are always arms ready to keep us safe, through all the
foolish and even wrong things we do--if only we will trust them and run
into them. I hope the children who _may_ some day read this won't say I
am preaching, or make fun of it. I must tell what I really have felt and
thought, or else it would be a pretence of a story altogether. And this
first remembrance has always stayed with me.

Then come the sunsets. I have told you a little about them, already. I
must often have looked at them before I can remember, but one specially
beautiful has kept in my mind because it was on one of my birthdays.

I think it must have been my third birthday, though granny is half
inclined to think it was my fourth. _I_ don't, because if it had been my
fourth I should remember _some_ things between it and my third
birthday, and I don't--nothing at all, between the running into granny's
arms, which she too remembers, and which was before I was three, there
is nothing I can get hold of, till that lovely sunset