'You are a humane little fellow. Elizabeth, we might have thought of this.'
Very kind words were now spoken to me by Sir Edward, and he called me Harriet, precious name now grown to me. Lady Harriet kissed me, and said she would never forget how long she had loved me as her child. These were comfortable words, but I heard echoed round the room:
'Poor thing! she cannot help it! I am sure she is to be pitied! Dear Lady Harriet, how kind, how considerate you are!'
Ah! what a deep sense of my altered condition did I then feel!
'Let the young ladies divert themselves in another room,' said Sir Edward; 'and Harriet, take your new sister with you, and help her to entertain your friends.'
Yes, he called me Harriet again, and afterwards invented new names for his daughter and me, and always called us by them, apparently in jest; yet I knew it was only because he would not hurt me with hearing our names reversed. When Sir Edward desired us to show the children into another room, Ann and I walked towards the door. A new sense of humiliation arose. How could I go out at the door before Miss Lesley? I stood irresolute. She drew back. The elder brother of my friend Augustus assisted me in this perplexity. Pushing us all forward, as if in a playful mood, he drove us indiscriminately before him, saying:
'I will make one among you to-day.'
He had never joined in our sports before.
My luckless play, that sad instance of my duplicity, was never once mentioned to me afterwards, not even by any one of the children who had acted in it, and I must also tell you how considerate an old lady was at the time about our dresses. As soon as she perceived things growing very serious, she hastily stripped off the upper garments we wore to represent our different characters. I think I should have died with shame if the child had led me into the drawing-room in the mummery I had worn to represent a nurse. This good lady was of another essential service to me, for, perceiving an irresolution in everyone how they should behave to us, which distressed me very much, she contrived to place Miss Lesley above me at table, and called her Miss Lesley, and me Miss Withers, saying at the same time in a low voice, but as if she meant I should hear her,
'It is better these things should be done at once, then they are over.'