+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ MISUNDERSTOOD BY FLORENCE MONTGOMERY, _AUTHOR OF_ "A VERY SIMPLE STORY," and "PEGGY AND OTHER TALES," "THROWN TOGETHER." NEW YORK: ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET. NEW YORK: EDWARD O. JENKINS, ROBERT RUTTER, _Printer and Stereotyper_, _Binder_, 20 North William St. 116 and 118 East 14th Street. TO THE HON. MRS. AUGUSTUS LIDDELL THE FOLLOWING STORY IS Dedicated. PREFACE. The following is not a child's story. It is intended for those who are interested in children; for those who are willing to stoop to view life as it appears to a child, and to enter for half-an-hour into the manifold small interests, hopes, joys, and trials which make up its sum. It has been thought that the lives of children, as known by themselves, from their own little point of view, are not always sufficiently realized; that they are sometimes overlooked or misunderstood; and to throw some light, however faint, upon the subject, is one of the objects of this little story. So much of it has been gathered from observation and recollection, that the author cannot help hoping it may not entirely fail of its aim. MISUNDERSTOOD. In Two Parts. _PART I._ CHAPTER I. Ever since the nursery dinner has the rain come pouring down all over the fields and meadows, the lawns and gardens, the roofs and gables of old Wareham Abbey, in the county of Sussex. Ever since the cloth was cleared away have two little curly heads been pressed close together at the nursery window, and two pair of eager eyes been watching the clouds and sky. What a dreadful wet afternoon! It is so particularly tiresome, as their father is expected home to-day, and had promised the two little brothers that they should come and meet him at the station. There would be no room for Virginie in the dog-cart, and so, if they promised to sit very still, and not stand on the wheel to get in, or jump out before the carriage had stopped, or do anything else equally extraordinary, they were to have been trusted to old Peter, the coachman, and what fun _that_ would have been! To get away from Virginie for so long was the height of human enjoyment. She seemed to them a being created on purpose to interfere with every plan of enjoyment, to foresee danger where they only saw fun, and so bring the shadow of her everlasting "Ne faites pas ceci, ne faites pas cela," across the sunny path of their boyish schemes and pastimes.