It is on the lighter side of her nature that I have chiefly dwelt, on the easier duties of those happier days. But in the hour of trial, Weizchen proved herself no less true and devoted, standing firmly at her post, as unwearied in her nursing, in her care and attendance on my mother, as she had formerly been in contributing to every scheme of amusement. All her best qualities were shown during those years of sorrow, and it was perhaps the large share of the burden which she took upon her own shoulders, by which she was herself prematurely aged and saddened. She lived with us till I was about fourteen, and then retired with a pension to rooms assigned her in grandmamma’s pretty house. Her memory is bound up with some of the happiest recollections of my childhood, and still at times I fancy I hear her voice ring out in one or other of the dear old melodies--the plaintive ballad of “Emma and Eginhard,” or Mozart’s graceful “Lullaby,” which she sang so often to us in the bygone days, in the old home by the Rhine. CHAPTER XIV A GROUP OF HUMBLE FRIENDS Of these there are so many--kind honest hearts, whose worth I learnt to recognise in bygone days, and whom it would be impossible for me to leave unnoticed here. I cannot name them all, but all are in my thoughts, as I select just a few from their number to inscribe among my Penates. The one I would mention first, the truly excellent women who when Weizchen retired undertook the management of our household, was with us through those especially trying years in which my parents’ ill-health and poor Otto’s constant sufferings made the interior of our house more resemble that of a hospital than of an ordinary home. Frau Baring was a gentle-voiced, mild-eyed woman past middleage, who had herself experienced much sorrow, and this very fact made her more fitted for the surroundings than a younger, livelier person would have proved. Not that there was anything morose or depressing about our new housekeeper, of whom I happened to see a good deal, it being my mother’s wish now that my more serious studies were finished, that I should gain some practical knowledge of the matters under her control. So I was duly initiated into some of the mysteries of her domain, watching her at her work of superintending, and giving orders, learning the art of book-keeping and even making an occasional inspection with her of larders, pantry and linen-closet. As for the results achieved, I cannot look back on these with very great satisfaction, as all such commonplace details of daily life seemed to me scarcely worth the time and trouble bestowed on them, and I by no means relished being called upon to waste any thought on such dry and prosaic matters. Entering the daily or weekly expenditure in an account-book appeared to me the most cruel trial of human patience that could possibly have been devised, but the very horror with which the sight of these dreary ledgers inspired me, did but increase my