s, Esq., of Drayton Windsor, a
partner in the great brewery of Foker and Co.

When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall
girl, that she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally
perhaps, also, felt herself too tall for their society. "Fancy myself,"
she thought, "dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore
like Lucy Tucker!" She did not care for their sports. She could not walk
with them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them at the
academy, nor attend the Cours de Litterature Universelle et de Science
Comprehensive of the professor then the mode--the smallest girls took
her up in the class. She was bewildered by the multitude of things they
bade her learn. At the youthful little assemblies of her sex, when,
under the guide of their respected governesses, the girls came to tea at
six o'clock, dancing, charades, and so forth, Ethel herded not with
the children of her own age, nor yet with the teachers who sit apart at
these assemblies, imparting to each other their little wrongs; but Ethel
romped with the little children--the rosy little trots--and took them
on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored,
and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty kindly girl
showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, farouche and
intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one
after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged
to describe the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a
share in this story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine
Muse leadeth him. But of this be sure--she is as inexorable as Truth. We
must tell our tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at
her bidding.

Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family,
whose history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding
the Earl of Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian
Newcome had married.

When we read in the fairy stories that the King and Queen, who lived
once upon a time, build a castle of steel, defended by moats and
sentinels innumerable, in which they place their darling only child, the
Prince or Princess, whose birth has blessed them after so many years
of marriage, and whose christening feast has been interrupted by the
cantankerous humour of that notorious old fairy who always persists in
coming, although she has not r