It would be ungracious and undutiful in me to presume to decide whether there was any foundation or not for the dislike that my father's family always felt for my mother.
All I can venture to say is, that her children never had any cause to complain of her.
Her passionate affection for my sister, her pride in the child's beauty, I remember well, as also her uniform kindness and indulgence toward me.
My personal defects must have been a sore trial to her in secret, but neither she nor my father ever showed me that they perceived any difference between Caroline and myself.

When presents were made to my sister, presents were made to me.

When my father and mother caught my sister up in their arms and kissed her they scrupulously gave me my turn afterward.

My childish instinct told me that there was a difference in their smiles when they looked at me and looked at her; that the kisses given to Caroline were warmer than the kisses given to me; that the hands which dried her tears in our childish griefs, touched her more gently than the hands which dried mine.

But these, and other small signs of preference like them, were such as no parents could be expected to control.