I sometimes went out to tea in the town; I did not like it, but I did it to please my mother. At one or two houses I was accustomed to a great impression of muffins, cake, and marmalade, with coffee and cream; and the children I met there did nothing adequately but eat. At a few houses, again, I fared better, for they only gave us little loaves of bread and little cups of tea, and we romped the evening long, and dramatized our elders and betters until the servants came for us. But I, at least, was always ready to go home, and glad to see my short, wide bed beside my mother's vast one, and my spotless dimity curtains with the lucid muslin frills; and how often I sang the best tunes in my head to the nameless effect of rosemary and lavender that haunted my large white pillow! We always went to bed, and breakfasted, very early, and I usually had an hour before nine wherein to disport myself as I chose. It was in these hours Millicent taught me to sing from notes and to discern the aspect of the key-board. Of the crowding associations, the teeming remembrances, just at infancy and early childhood, I reject all, except such as it becomes positively necessary I should recall; therefore I dwell not upon this phase of my life, delightful as it was, and stamped with perfect purity,--the reflex of an unperverted temperament and of kindly tenderness. FOOTNOTES: [1] The character of Charles Auchester is supposed to have been intended for a sketch of the violinist Joachim, whose talent was first recognized by Mendelssohn, and who studied for many years at Leipsic under that composer's influence, though his own writings betray a strong leaning towards Schumann. [2] A family of eminent harpsichord-makers. Jacob, the founder of the business, went to London from Germany early in the last century, and died in 1778. The business has been continued through five generations, and is now conducted by Joseph Kirkman in the same city. [3] Compilers of English psalmody in the last century. CHAPTER II.