"But I don't like Amelia, nor Becky; and the Crawleys are horrid. And Thackeray seems holding up everybody and laughing at them. I like to believe in people."
"I am glad there is a time when we can believe in them: it is the radiant time of youth. What did that little smile hide, and half betray? Confess!"
"Are you so very old?"
The charming gravity was irresistible.
"Seven and twenty, and I am beginning to worship Thackeray. At seven and thirty, he will be one of my passions, I know. Now and then I come to a sentence that goes to my heart. No, do not read him yet awhile, unless it is some of the little things. There is 'Dr. Birch and his Young Friends;' and if you want to be amused you must read his continuation of 'Ivanhoe.' But then you will have neither heroines nor heroes left. And if you and Miss Daisy want to laugh beyond measure, get the 'Rose and the Ring,' that he wrote for his two little girls."
"Oh," said Hanny, "are they at home, in England?"
"Yes, with an aunt."
"Haven't they any mother?"
"They have no mother," he said gravely.
Years later, the novelist was to be one of the little girl's heroes, when she knew all the bravery of his life, and why his little girls were without a mother.