eine Seufze werden
Ein Nachtigallen Chor...."

So sang Mary, and I declare some of the royal eyes were moist.

They all sang and played, these Josselins; and tumbled and acted,
and were droll and original and fetching, as their father had been
and was still; and, like him, amiable and full of exuberant life;
and, like their mother, kind and appreciative and sympathetic and
ever thoughtful of others, without a grain of selfishness or
conceit.

[Illustration: "'ZE BRINCESS VOULD BE SO JARMT'"]

They were also great athletes, boys and girls alike; good swimmers
and riders, and first-rate oars. And though not as good at books and
lessons as they might have been, they did not absolutely disgrace
themselves, being so quick and intelligent.

Amid all this geniality and liveliness at home and this beauty of
surrounding nature abroad, little Marty seemed to outgrow in a
measure her constitutional delicacy.

It was her ambition to become as athletic as a boy, and she was
persevering in all physical exercises--and throw stones very
straight and far, with a quite easy masculine sweep of the arm; I
taught her myself.

It was also her ambition to draw, and she would sit for an hour or
more on a high stool by her father, or on the arm of his chair, and
watch him at his work in silence. Then she would get herself paper
and pencil, and try and do likewise; but discouragement would
overtake her, and she would have to give it up in despair, with a
heavy sigh and a clouded look on her lovely little pale face; and
yet they were surprisingly clever, these attempts of hers.

Then she took to dictating a novel to her sisters and to me: it was
all about an immense dog and three naughty boys, who were awful
dunces at school and ran away to sea, dog and all; and performed
heroic deeds in Central Africa, and grew up there, "booted and
bearded, and burnt to a brick!" and never married or fell in love,
or stooped to any nonsense of that kind.

This novel, begun in the handwriting of all of us, and continued in
her own, remained unfinished; and the precious MS. is now in my
possession. I have read it oftener than any other novel, French or
English, except, perhaps, _Vanity Fair_!

I may say that I had something to do with the development of her
literary faculty, as I read many good books to her before she could
read quite comfortably for herself: _Evenings at Home_, _The Swiss
Family Robinson_, _Gulliver_, _Robinson Crusoe_, book