The ladies to whose care his daughter was confided were probably fit to teach us.
"It would save a great deal of trouble," my guardian confessed, and it must also be confessed that Major Buller was glad to avoid trouble when he could conscientiously do so.
I think it was his warm approval of Eleanor which finally clinched the question.

He thought that she would be a good companion for poor Matilda.
Why I speak of her as "poor Matilda" demands some explanation.
Before I attempt to give it I must say that there is one respect in which our biographies must always be less satisfactory than a story that one might invent.

When you are putting down true things about yourself and your friends, you cannot divide people neatly into the good and the bad, the injurers and the injured, as you can if you are writing a tale out of your head.

The story seems more complete when you are able either to lay the blame of the melancholy events on the shoulders of some unworthy character, or to show that they were the natural punishment of the sufferer's own misconduct.

But in thinking of Matilda and Aunt Theresa and Major Buller, or even of the Doctor and Mrs.
Buller's lady friends, this is not possible.
The morbid condition--of body and mind--into which Matilda fell for some time was no light misfortune either as regards her sufferings or the discomfort it produced in the household, and I am afraid she was both mismanaged and in fault herself.
It is safe, at any rate, to take the blame for one's own share, and I have often thought, with bitterness of spirit, that, child as I was, I might have been both forbearing and helpful to Matilda at a time when her temper was very much tried by ill-health and untoward circumstances.
We had a good many squabbles about this period.