“No need at all, nurse; but I should just like to see if Mary would know it again.”
When Mary was called in, she did not remember having ever seen the gown before.
“Well, how odd that is!” said Mrs. Rickham, “that Miss Anna should remember better than you do, when she was only three years old when my mistress died, and you were five.”
“Oh! but I remember many things that Anna cannot,” said Mary: “I remember my coming to stay here when papa and mamma went to London. How long ago is that, nurse?”
“Let me see: my mistress died seven years ago, and she went to London every year for three years before she died, and it was the first visit when you came to me, the year Miss Anna was born. My dear, you can’t possibly remember so long ago as ten years, when you could only just go alone.”
“Oh! but I do,” said Mary; “and it is just the trying to run about the green by myself that I remember. You had a wooden step at the door then; and I used to take fast hold of the door-post, and put down first one foot and then the other; and when I could not reach the ground, I sat down on the step and slid, so that I fell softly on my hands and knees.”
“Bless the child!” cried the nurse; “’tis all true; but what can make you remember it?”
“Ah! that I don’t know; but I can tell you of some other things. Do you remember whether I cried the first night you put me to bed?”
“Yes, Miss, you did; for I said to my husband, that you had got into a bad habit with your new maid, of crying when you went to bed. However, it was only for that night, I think.”
“It was because the bed creaked, and frightened me; and the feel of the coarse sheets was not like what I had been accustomed to. And that old elm too, how its rough bark hurt my little hands when I used to try to get round it.”