I can remember her brief appearances in the room where I played, in much dirt and contentment, at my Ayah's feet--rustling in silks and satins, glittering with costly ornaments, beautiful and scented, like a fairy dream.

I would forego all these visions for one--only one--memory of her praying by my bedside, or teaching me at her knee.

But she was so young, and so pretty! And yet, O Mother, Mother! better than all the triumphs of your loveliness in its too short prime would it have been to have left a memory of your beautiful face with some devout or earnest look upon it--"as it had been the face of an angel"-- to your only child.
As I sit thinking thus, I find Eleanor's dark eyes gazing at me from her place, to which she has gone back; and she says softly, "Margery, dear Margery, do let us give it up." But I would not give it up now, for anything whatever.] The first six years of my life were spent chiefly with my Ayah.

I loved her very dearly.

I kissed and fondled her dark cheeks as gladly as if they had been fair and ruddy, and oftener than I touched my mother's, which were like the petals of a china rose.