I was a fat, healthy, perfectly happy baby, and I grew into a fat, healthy, perfectly happy little girl. Nothing seemed to come wrong to me. I never got ill, and by nature I think I must have had a very even, comfortable temper. I was always smiling and satisfied. Now you see how I came by my name of “Sweet Content.” Mamma kept it for a sort of private pet name, but it did very well with my real name, which is Constantia. And this was naturally shortened into “Connie.” I remember papa and mamma laughing very much one day at a new servant, who must, I suppose, have overheard my private name, and wishing to be very respectful, spoke of me as “Miss Content.”
“Never let it get into ‘Discontent,’ Connie,” said papa.
“That she never will,” said mamma fondly. “I am sure all the good fairies, and none of the spiteful ones, were at my Sweet Content’s christening.”
I was quite used to hearing pretty things like that said to me or of me, and I took them as a matter of course, never doubting that I deserved them. And as no one contradicted me, and I had everything I wanted, and as I was not naturally a cross-grained or ill-tempered child, the spoiling did not show as quickly, or quite in the same ways, that it usually does, though I cannot help thinking that some people must have noticed it and thought me a selfish little goose. If they did, however, they were too kind to mamma, remembering her sad story, ever to say so. Besides, mamma was gentle and sweet to everybody, and she had too much good taste and feeling to go on fussing about me before people, in the way some very foolish parents do.
So altogether, up to the time I was ten or eleven years old, my fool’s paradise was a very perfect one. I was quite satisfied that I was a model of every virtue, as well as exceedingly clever, and I am afraid papa and mamma thought so too; as to my looks, I have no doubt they were more than satisfied too; though to do myself justice, I really did not trouble myself about that part of my perfections, beyond being very particular indeed about my clothes, which I never would wear if they were the least shabby or spoilt. And as I was careless and extravagant, I must have cost a good deal in this way.
“Connie has such wonderful taste for a child of her age,” I remember hearing mamma say. “She cannot bear anything ugly, or ill-assorted colours.”
All the same, Connie had no objection to fishing for minnows in the pond with a perfectly new white muslin frock on, which was not rendered lovelier by streaks of green slime and brown mud stains all over the sash. I don’t know if I thought those “well-assorted colours.” And though I told mamma that my every-day hat was very common-looking without ostrich feathers, I never troubled myself that my best one was left out in the garden one Sunday afternoon, so that on Monday morning it was found utterly ruined by a shower of rain that had come on in the night!
If I had had any brothers or sisters I could not have been so indulged, for papa was not a rich man—no country doctors ever are, I think—though he was not poor. But no more babies came, and, in her devotion to me, I hardly think mamma wished for them. I remained the undisputed queen of my kingdom.
Mamma was never very strong after her three children’s deaths I was obliged to be gentle and quiet; I learnt to be so almost unconsciously, and this, I think, helped to make me seem much sweeter and better than I really was. I had almost no companions; there did not happen to be many children near my age in the neighbourhood, and even if there had been I doubt if mamma would have thought them good enough to be allowed to play with me. Though she never actually spoke against any one to me, I saw things quickly, and I know I had this feeling myself. Once or twice papa, who was too wise not to know that companionship is good for children, tried to bring about more friendship between me and our clergyman’s daughters. But I did not take to them. Anna, the eldest, was “stupid,” I said, so old for her age (she was really three years older that I), and always “fussing about her Sunday-school class, and helping her father, as if she was his curate.” How well I remember mamma’s smiling at this clever speech! And the two little ones were “babyish.” Then some other girls at Elmwood went to school, and even in their holiday time I did not care to play with “school-girls.” Besides which poor mamma was quite dreadfully afraid of infection, and perhaps this was only to be expected.
