ather felt her more an intruder than they had been, he
being of the mind that to house and feed and clothe, howsoever poorly,
these three burdens on him was a drain scarcely to be borne. His wife
had been a toast and not a fortune, and his estate not being great, he
possessed no more than his drinking, roystering, and gambling made full
demands upon.

The child was baptized Clorinda, and bred, so to speak, from her first
hour, in the garret and the servants' hall. Once only did her father
behold her during her infancy, which event was a mere accident, as he had
expressed no wish to see her, and only came upon her in the nurse's arms
some weeks after her mother's death. 'Twas quite by chance. The woman,
who was young and buxom, had begun an intrigue with a groom, and having a
mind to see him, was crossing the stable-yard, carrying her charge with
her, when Sir Jeoffry came by to visit a horse.

The woman came plump upon him, entering a stable as he came out of it;
she gave a frightened start, and almost let the child drop, at which it
set up a strong, shrill cry, and thus Sir Jeoffry saw it, and seeing it,
was thrown at once into a passion which expressed itself after the manner
of all his emotion, and left the nurse quaking with fear.

"Thunder and damnation!" he exclaimed, as he strode away after the
encounter; "'tis the ugliest yet. A yellow-faced girl brat, with eyes
like an owl's in an ivy-bush, and with a voice like a very peacocks.
Another mawking, plain slut that no man will take off my hands."

He did not see her again for six years. But little wit was needed to
learn that 'twas best to keep her out of his sight, as her sisters were
kept, and this was done without difficulty, as he avoided the wing of the
house where the children lived, as if it were stricken with the plague.

But the child Clorinda, it seemed, was of lustier stock than her older
sisters, and this those about her soon found out to their grievous
disturbance. When Mother Posset had drawn her from under her dead
mother's body she had not left shrieking for an hour, but had kept up her
fierce cries until the roof rang with them, and the old woman had jogged
her about and beat her back in the hopes of stifling her, until she was
exhausted and dismayed. For the child would not be stilled, and seemed
to have such strength and persistence in her as surely infant never
showed before.

"Never saw I such a brat among all I have brought into t