Mamma was always "resting." "She cannot want rest," I exclaimed, "when she does nothing to tire her! Oh, let me go to her!" for some foolish person had started a theory that I tired her.

I who worshiped her, who would have kept silence for a year rather than have disturbed her for one moment! I appealed to Sir Roland, and he consulted her; the result was that I was permitted to steal into her boudoir, and, to my childish mind, it seemed that during those days my mother's heart and mine grew together..