This Princess was the one who was suddenly hurried into the world on a July night at St. James's Palace. She was fourteen years of age when Matilda was born, and was a woman before her youngest sister ceased to be a child, so that she stood to her in the place of friend and counsellor. Augusta had not the beauty of Matilda, but she was a comely maiden with regular features, well-shaped figure, pleasant smile, and general animation. She was the best educated of the family. This was largely due to her thirst for knowledge. She read widely, and interested herself in the political and social questions of the day to a degree unusual with princesses of her age. She was sharp and quick-witted, and in her childhood precocious beyond her years. "La! Sir Robert," she pertly exclaimed, when only seven years of age, to Sir Robert Rich, whom she had mistaken for Sir Robert Walpole, "what has become of your blue string and your big belly?" Sir "Blue-string" was one of the Tory nicknames for Walpole, and in the caricatures of the time his corpulence was an endless subject of ridicule. Her parents, instead of reprimanding her, laughed at her pleasantries, with the result that they often found her inconveniently frank and troublesome. After Frederick's death her mother, who had no wish to have a grown-up daughter too soon, kept her in the background as much as possible, a treatment which the lively Augusta secretly resented. Matilda's other sisters, the Princesses Elizabeth and Louisa Anne, were nearer her in age and were much more tractable than Augusta. They both suffered from ill-health. Her eldest brother George Prince of Wales was a silent youth, shy and retiring, and not demonstrative in any way. Edward, her second brother, afterwards Duke of York, was livelier and was always a favourite with his sister. Her three youngest brothers, William Henry, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, Henry Frederick, later Duke of Cumberland, and Frederick William (who died at the age of fifteen), were her chief playmates, for they were nearer her in age. The children of Frederick Prince of Wales and Augusta had one characteristic in common; clever or stupid, lively or dull, sickly or strong in health, they were all affectionate and fond of one another. Quarrels were rare, and the brothers and sisters united in loving and spoiling the pet of the family, pretty, bright little Matilda.