se always
was that Harold was so exactly like her poor dear little Henry, except
for his beard, that she could almost think she was speaking to him!
She was somewhat deaf, and did not like to avow it, which accounted for
some of her blunders. One thing she could never understand, namely,
why Harold and Eustace had never met her "poor little Henry" in
Australia, which she always seemed to think about as big as the Isle of
Wight. He had been last heard of at Melbourne; and we might tell her a
hundred times that she might as well wonder we had not met a man at
Edinburgh; she always recurred to "I do so wish you had seen my poor
dear little Henry!" till Harold arrived at a promise to seek out the
said Henry, who, by all appearances, was an unmitigated scamp, whenever
he should return to Australia.

On the whole, her presence was very good for us, if only by infusing
the element of age. She liked to potter about in the morning,
attending to her birds and bantams, and talking to the gardening men,
weeding women, and all the people in the adjacent hamlet; and,
afterwards, the fireside, with her knitting and a newspaper, sufficed
her. Not the daily papers--they were far too much for her; but the
weekly paper from her own town, which lasted her till a new one came,
as she spelled it through, and communicated the facts and facetiae as
she thought them suited to our capacity. She was a better walker than
I, and would seldom come out in the carriage, for she always caught
cold when she did so. A long nap after dinner ended in her resuming
her knitting quite contentedly in silence. She wanted no more, though
she was pleased if any one said a few kindly words to her. Nothing
could be more inoffensive, and she gave us a centre and something
needing consideration. I feared Dora might be saucy to her, but
perhaps motherliness was what the wild child needed, for she drew
towards her, and was softened, and even submitted to learn to knit, for
the sake of the mighty labour of making a pair of socks for Harold.

The respectability her presence gave in our pew, and by our hearth, was
a great comfort to our friends of all degrees. She was a very pretty
old lady, with dark eyes, cheeks still rosy, lovely loose waves of
short snowy curls, and a neat, active little figure, which looked well
in the good black silks in which I contrived to invest her.

Good old woman, she thought us all shockingly full of worldliness,
little guessing