took pains to explain
to me. So of course if she had given him up for me she _would_ have been
changeable.

She did her best, I will say that for her. She told Gerard all about me,
and he was very nice to me. But it was in rather a big boy way, which I
did not understand. I thought he was treating me like a baby when _he_
only meant to be kind and brotherly. I remember one day being so
offended at his lifting me over a stile, that it was all I could do not
to burst into tears!

So it came to be the way among us, without anything being actually said
about it, that during Jerry's holidays I was mostly with the four
others--Nan and Vallie and the two younger boys.

And I daresay it was a good thing for me. For none of them were at all
old for their age; they were just hearty, healthy, regular _children_,
living in the present and very happy in it. And if I had been altogether
with the older ones I might have grown more and more 'old-fashioned.'
For Gerard was a very serious and thoughtful boy, and Sharley, though in
outside ways she seemed rather wild and hoydenish, was really very
clever and very wise, to be only the age she was. I never quite took in
that side of her character till I saw her with Jerry--she seemed quite
transformed.

One thing came to pass, however, which was a great pleasure to the two
people it chiefly concerned and to Sharley. As for me, I don't think I
gave much attention to it, and I am not sure that if it had at all
interfered with my own life I should not have been rather jealous!

This was a close friendship between Gerard Nestor and grandmamma.

And it is necessary to speak about it because it was the beginning of
things which brought about great changes.

Grandmamma loved boys and she was one of those women that are well
fitted to manage them. She used to say that till she got _me_, she had
never had anything to do with _girls_. For her own children were both
boys--papa was the elder, and the other was a dear boy who died when he
was only sixteen, and whom of course I had never seen, though grandmamma
liked me to speak of him as 'Uncle Guy.' Then, too, she had had some
charge of her nephew, Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur.

Her friendship with Jerry came about by his reading French and German
with her in the holidays. He had never been out of England and he was
anxious to improve his 'foreign languages,' as he was backward in them,
besides having a very bad accent indeed.

Granny has often said