So much we learned before we learned to speak our mother tongue, and all in that first lesson, so far as I was concerned. A lesson typified in the figure hurrying to the rescue down the flagged path toward the gate. My mother!... who had moved through all our days with changeless calm. And now she was running so fast that her thick hair was loosened. A lock blew across her face. Melanie, our nurse, stood inside the gate with Bettina in her arms. A lady leaned over, asking the way to the Dew Pond. Melanie could not even understand the question. But I knew all about the Dew Pond. I had been there with my mother to look for caddis flies. So I pointed to the knoll against the sky, and stammered a direction. Bettina was of no use to anyone looking for the Dew Pond. But she quickly took her place as the centre of interest. All that she did to make good her Divine Right was to show her dimple, and point a meaning finger at the jewelled watch pinned to the stranger's gown. The lady held out her hands to our baby. Bettina consented to be taken nearer to the sparkling toy. Then our mother, as I say, hurrying out of the house as though it were on fire, taking the baby and the nurse and me away in such haste, I had no time to finish telling the lady how to find the Dew Pond. I heard my mother, who was commonly so gentle, telling the nurse in stern staccato French if ever it happened again she would be sent away. Never, never was she to allow anyone to touch our baby. Had the strange woman kissed Bettina? The new nurse lied. And I said no word. But the impression was stamped deep. No one outside the family at Duncombe was ever to kiss Bettina. Or even to kiss me--which I remember thinking a pity. Moreover, I perceived that if, through the ignorance or the wickedness of stranger-folk, this thing were to happen again, one would never dare confess it. For such a catastrophe the far-sighted Bon Dieu had provided the refuge of the lie. CHAPTER II LESSONS There was one lasting cloud upon a childhood spent as close to our mother as fledglings in a nest. Our mother was the most beautiful person we had ever seen. Even as quite young children we were dimly conscious of the touch of pathos in the beauty that is frail, as though we guessed it was never to grow old. But this was not the cloud. For the presentiment was too undefined, it came in a guise too gentle to give us present uneasiness. In the unquestioning way of children, we accepted the fact that one's mother should be too easily tried to join in active games. But she taught us how to play. She was as much a factor in our recreation as in our lessons--so much so that we were a long time in finding out the dividing line between work and play. I think that must have been because our mother had a genius for teaching. The hard things she made stimulating, and the easy things she made delight. No; there was an exception to this.