That was a happy time. We three young ones and Dick Stanton studied together all the morning, and played together all the afternoon, save for the two hours or so of needlework, and the like, which my mother exacted from us girls. I may say without vanity that brother Henry and I were the best scholars. Alice was passable, but poor Dick was always in disgrace. In all the manly exercises, such as riding the great horse, shooting with both long and cross-bow, sword play, and so on, however, Dick was far beyond any of the other lads. So he was in managing a horse, a dog, or a hawk, and 'twas wonderful how all dumb creatures loved him. Now he is a squire in France, with my Lord his uncle, and I am here. I don't suppose I shall ever see him again in this world.
My mother was alive then. She was a most notable lady, always very still and quiet, but attending well to the ways of her household, and keeping all in their places, not by any assumption of greatness, but by the dignity and kindness of her own manners. She was a most kind mother, but not so fond as some, at least to me. It used to trouble me sometimes, till one day, by chance, I found out the reason, by overhearing some words spoken between her and an old gentlewoman, a kinswoman of hers, who stayed some time with her.
"Methinks Rosamond is no favorite," said my old lady. "And yet 'tis a good, docile little maid, more to my mind than Alice, with all her beauty."
"You are right, kinswoman," replied my mother; "but he who has the keeping of another's treasure, if he be wise, does not suffer himself to be overmuch looking upon or handling, the same. Rosamond is not mine. She is given to the Church, and I dare not give my mother's heart its way with her, lest my natural affections should rise up against my Lord's demands."
[I remember my own heart rather rose against this doctrine, even then. It seemed to me that our Lord cared for His own mother even on the cross. I knew that much, though I had never seen the Scriptures at that time, and I could not see why He should have given people natural affections only to be trampled on. Now I know that St. Paul places them who are without natural affection in no flattering category.]
When I showed this that I have written to dear mother, she said I must run my pen through what I wrote about Sister Catherine.* She said we must concern ourselves with our own faults and not with those of others. But somehow our own faults and other people's will get mixed together.
* So she did, but not so that I could not read it, and I judged best to write it out with the rest.—D. C.
