e life of order and tidiness we were to live abroad, passed that
week at home with our room in such chaos as it had never been before.
How we prepared against an amount of spare time, that experience
eventually teaches one is not to be found out visiting; and, with this
object, took more sewing than we should have performed in a month at
home; books, that we had not touched for years; drawings, that were
fated to be once touched, and no more.

"I will not describe the big box, which my father lent to us, nor the
joys of packing it. How Fatima's workbox dove-tailed with my desk. How
the books (not having been chosen with reference to this great event)
were of awkward sizes, and did not make comfortable paving for the
bottom of the trunk; whilst folded stockings may be called the
packer's delight, from their usefulness to fill up corners. How,
having packed the whole week long, we were barely ready, and a good
deal flurried at the last moment; and how we took all our available
property with us, and left the key of the trunk behind. Fancy for
yourself, how the green coach picked us up at the toll-bar, and how,
as it jingled on, we felt the first qualm of home-sickness, and,
stretching our heads and hands out of the window, waved adieux and
kisses innumerable to Home, regardless of our fellow-traveller in the
corner, an old gentleman, with a yellow silk handkerchief on his head,
who proved in the end a very pleasant companion. I remember that we
told him our family history, with minutest particulars, and conjugated
four regular Latin verbs by his orders; and that he rewarded our
confidences and learning with the most clear, the most sweet, the most
amber-coloured sticks of barley-sugar I have ever had the good fortune
to meet with. I remember also how, in the warmth of our new
friendship, Fatima unveiled to him the future, which, through some
joke of my father's, we had laid out for ourselves.

"I am to marry a Sultan, for I am moon-faced; but Mary is to be a
linguist, for she has large eyes.'

"'Then Miss Mary is not to marry?' said the old gentleman, with a grim
smile.

"I shook my head in sage disdain. 'When I am sixteen, I shall be an
Amazon.'

"Precisely what I meant by this I don't think I knew myself, but my
dreams were an odd compound of heroic and fairy lore, with a love and
ambition for learning that were simply an inheritance. Many a night
did I fancy myself master of all the languages of the world, hunting