answer our
little questions.

I must here make a digression to inform my young readers that, though I
was a poor child, a mere pauper among a number of others who were not
any poorer than myself, yet I was always treated with a great deal of
respect both by the nurse and the other children. I was always called
Lady Anne, and in all our little plays my companions would choose me to
be a lady or their queen. Then I would, in a language which seemed
natural to me, order the carriage for an airing, or propose a saunter in
the park, or perhaps say we would go to the opera in the evening. The
girls whom I admitted to the honour of visiting me I would address as
ladies, and tell some of the others to come and say that 'Her ladyship's
carriage was waiting,' or that 'Lady Sally's carriage stopped the way.'
It was on one of these occasions that my nurse said to me:

'Ah, Lady Anne, it is a thousand pities that you are not among the lords
and ladies you are so often talking about. It was an unlucky chance that
brought you here, for, poor child, with us you are like a fish out of
water.'

'What was it that brought me here?' said I. 'How did I come?'

'It is a long story to tell you,' replied she, 'but, as it is about
yourself, you will not be tired of hearing it; so come, children, get
your knitting and sit down, and you shall hear how Lady Anne came to
live among us.'

In a few minutes we all had our knitting, and seated ourselves so as to
form a semi- or half-circle round the good woman. Curiosity and
expectation were painted in every countenance, myself the most curious
and anxious of the whole group, for I often, in my own mind, wondered
how it was that I no longer saw the gentlemen and ladies who it seemed
to myself I had been in the habit of seeing, and where my father could
be gone to, and why everything about me was so different to what it had
once been. Our nurse having examined our work, and directed us how to go
on with it, began her little narrative in the following manner:

'It will be two years on the twelfth of next November since one cold,
wet evening, about eight o'clock, a lady, with a little girl that seemed
about five years old, stopped at the Falcon Inn at E----. That lady was
your mother, and that little girl was you, Lady Anne. Well, the chaise
stopped, and your mother got out, and desired to be shown to a bedroom,
and ordered tea, and tired and ill the landlady said she looked, but she
did not know h