character. I am sure it is not to be
wondered at."

"O no, no," said Henrietta. "What a mystery it has always seemed to us
about papa! She sometimes mentioning him in talking about her childish
days and Knight Sutton, but if we tried to ask any more, grandmamma
stopping us directly, till we learned to believe we ought never to utter
his name. I do believe, though, that mamma herself would have found it a
comfort to talk to us about him, if poor dear grandmamma had not always
cut her short, for fear it should be too much for her."

"But had you not always an impression of something dreadful about his
death?"

"O yes, yes; I do not know how we acquired it, but that I am sure we
had, and it made us shrink from asking any questions, or even from
talking to each other about it. All I knew I heard from Beatrice. Did
Uncle Geoffrey tell you this?"

"Yes, he told me when he was here last Easter, and I was asking him to
speak to mamma about my fishing, and saying how horrid it was to be kept
back from everything. First he laughed, and said it was the penalty of
being an only son, and then he entered upon this history, to show me how
it is."

"But it is very odd that she should have let you learn to ride, which
one would have thought she would have dreaded most of all."

"That was because she thought it right, he says. Poor mamma, she said
to him, 'Geoffrey, if you think it right that Fred should begin to
ride, never mind my folly.' He says that he thinks it cost her as much
resolution to say that as it might to be martyred. And the same about
going to school."

"Yes, yes; exactly," said Henrietta, "if she thinks it is right, bear it
she will, cost her what it may! O there is nobody like mamma. Busy Bee
says so, and she knows, living in London and seeing so many people as
she does."

"I never saw anyone so like a queen," said Fred. "No, nor anyone so
beautiful, though she is so pale and thin. People say you are like her
in her young days, Henrietta; and to be sure, you have a decent face of
your own, but you will never be as beautiful as mamma, not if you live
to be a hundred."

"You are afraid to compliment my face because it is so like your own,
Master Fred," retorted his sister; "but one comfort is, that I shall
grow more like her by living to a hundred, whereas you will lose all
the little likeness you have, and grow a grim old Black-beard! But I was
going to say, Fred, that, though I think there is a great deal o