She was, indeed, an odd-looking woman, the jailer to whom my parents so unconcernedly confided me. Not unkind, but austere and grotesque in her black cap and long black veil. She had left a Tipperary village to become a lady of Mercy in the English convent, and to her was intrusted the care of my deported self. In religion her name was Sister Clare, and the impression she has left on me is that of an inoffensive policeman masquerading in woman's attire, with limbs too long for a decorous management of them, honest, cold blue eyes, and, instead of the vivid hues of life upon the lean cheek, discoloured parchment drawn without a wrinkle tightly over the high-boned impassible visage. I had the bad taste to show fright upon sight of her lugubrious garb of postulant, and like the little savage I was, passionately declined her proffered kiss; but when my stepfather held me on his knees beside her, and spoke to her with his charming affability, I let myself be coaxed into equable endurance of the queer picture. I saw then that she was not dangerous. Indulgence lurked beneath the austere expression, and if the glance was cold, it was neither hard nor cruel. Up-stairs in the nursery the hours passed tumultuously in a frenzy of discussion. Each little head was busy forging its theory of deportment and action in circumstances so strange and adventurous as those of a baby girl going out alone among the sharks and foreigners of a cold undreamed-of world. The immediate fear was that I should disgrace my land by my Kildare accent. My eldest sister contemptuously declared that I talked "just like that disgusting little girl with the oily black ringlets"; and the imminence of a shower at the abrupt reference to the dear and absent Mary Jane, so far away, so unconscious of my perils and terrors and importance, averted an outburst of indignation at the wanton insult cast upon her picturesque head. It was regarded as an aggravation of my imperfections that I could not write, else I might have kept up the lively excitement of my departure by a raw account of my adventures. But by the time I should have mastered the difficult art of writing and spelling, I should probably have forgotten all my wonderful experiences, and they would have lost all interest in the story of my early travels.