go before ladies. He had no ease of manner, as my lady
once said of him, though on any occasion of duty, he had an immense deal
of dignity.

CHAPTER III.

As far as I can remember, it was very soon after this that I first began
to have the pain in my hip, which has ended in making me a cripple for
life. I hardly recollect more than one walk after our return under Mr.
Gray's escort from Mr. Lathom's. Indeed, at the time, I was not without
suspicions (which I never named) that the beginning of all the mischief
was a great jump I had taken from the top of one of the stiles on that
very occasion.

Well, it is a long while ago, and God disposes of us all, and I am not
going to tire you out with telling you how I thought and felt, and how,
when I saw what my life was to be, I could hardly bring myself to be
patient, but rather wished to die at once. You can every one of you
think for yourselves what becoming all at once useless and unable to
move, and by-and-by growing hopeless of cure, and feeling that one must
be a burden to some one all one's life long, would be to an active,
wilful, strong girl of seventeen, anxious to get on in the world, so as,
if possible, to help her brothers and sisters. So I shall only say, that
one among the blessings which arose out of what seemed at the time a
great, black sorrow was, that Lady Ludlow for many years took me, as it
were, into her own especial charge; and now, as I lie still and alone in
my old age, it is such a pleasure to think of her!

Mrs. Medlicott was great as a nurse, and I am sure I can never be
grateful enough to her memory for all her kindness. But she was puzzled
to know how to manage me in other ways. I used to have long, hard fits
of crying; and, thinking that I ought to go home--and yet what could they
do with me there?--and a hundred and fifty other anxious thoughts, some
of which I could tell to Mrs. Medlicott, and others I could not. Her way
of comforting me was hurrying away for some kind of tempting or
strengthening food--a basin of melted calves-foot jelly was, I am sure
she thought, a cure for every woe.

"There take it, dear, take it!" she would say; "and don't go on fretting
for what can't be helped."

But, I think, she got puzzled at length at the non-efficacy of good
things to eat; and one day, after I had limped down to see the doctor, in
Mrs. Medlicott's sitting-room--a room lined with cupboards, containing
preserves and dainties of