I could not have been more than three years old when I was brought down to the _grand salon_ to be shown to a friend of my father's, an Englishman, on his way to England from India, and a pink silk dress I then wore, and my intense satisfaction in it, is my next memory. It had a stiff little bodice and skirt, and there were pink rosettes over my ears. But I could not have been a pretty child, for my golden hair, which grew abundantly in later years, was then very scanty, and my mouth was large. I was stood upon a mahogany table, of which I still see the vast and polished spaces beneath me, and Mr. John Dobray, when I was introduced to him by my proud father, said, "So this is Sophie." [Illustration: "Quimper is an old town"] Mr. Dobray wore knee-breeches, silk stockings, and a high stock. I see my father, too, very tall, robust, and fair, with the pleasantest face. But my father's figure fills all my childhood. I was his pet and darling. When I cried and was naughty, my mother would say: "Take your daughter. She tires me and is insufferable." Then my father would take me in his arms and walk up and down with me while he sang me to sleep with old Breton songs. One of these ran: Jésus péguen brasvé, Plégar douras néné; Jésus péguen brasvé, Ad ondar garan té! This, as far as I remember, means, "May Jesus be happy, and may His grace make us all happy." At other times my father played strange, melancholy old Breton tunes to me on a violin, which he held upright on his knee, using the bow across it as though it were a 'cello. He was, though untaught, exceedingly musical, and played by ear on the clavecin anything he had heard. It must have been from him that I inherited my love of music, and I do not remember the time that I was not singing. I see myself, also, at the earliest age, held before my father on his saddle as we rode through woods. He wore an easy Byronic collar and always went bareheaded. He spent most of his time on horseback, visiting his farms or hunting. My father was of a wealthy bourgeois family of Landerneau, and it must have been his happy character and love of sport rather than his wealth--he was master of hounds and always kept the pack--that made him popular in Quimper, for the gulf between the _bourgeoisie_ and the _noblesse_ was almost impassable. Yet not only was he popular, but he had married my mother, who was of an ancient Breton family, the Rosvals. One of the Rosvals fought in the Combats de Trente against the English, and the dying and thirsty Beaumanoir to whom it was said on that historic day, "Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir," was a cousin of theirs. [Illustration: We played in the garden at Quimper]