My mistress always treated me most kindly, but I could not help smiling sometimes at the relations between her and her daughter. The fifteen-year-old girl tyrannized over her mother in a most incredible way. Unfortunately my mistress was convinced that her darling possessed everything that was needed to make a great artist, and did all in her power to develop the talents of that future genius. It is true that the girl sang, danced, painted, and wrote poetry, but I am doubtful as to the merit of her accomplishments. One day, when I was busily beating the carpets, my mistress rushed out of her room, and looking pale with nervousness she begged me to stop that noise because Miss Daisy was about to write a poem. I lifted the heavy carpet down at once, but thought of my own poems, which still proved to be a secret source of my scanty joys, and asked myself how many poems I could have written if absolute stillness was necessary for the writing of them. They were composed while I was working, while I was running up and downstairs, and there was nobody who cared. Nobody? No. Now and again a letter told me that the one or the other of my poems was exceptionally beautiful. When I had been at my post for some time, a great change happened. Miss Daisy fell ill with scarlet fever. As soon as the French girl knew about it she left the house. "Do you want to leave too?" my mistress asked me. "Certainly not," I replied. After seven weeks full of anxiety and fear, the doctor ordered the patient a change of air. All the necessary things were packed up immediately, and a few days later we looked out on the northern sea. I had got a room to myself, and was impatient to retire there. The evening came at last, but tired though I was, I did not think of sleep. I stepped to the window, opened it as much as one can open a window in England, and gazed enraptured at the heaving waters, on which the moonlight glittered and danced. It was very late before I went to bed on that night, and very early when I got up next morning. Nobody was astir yet, and I dressed noiselessly. During the night I had had a strange dream and felt like writing it down. I looked for a sheet of paper and while the sky deepened from pink into red, I wrote a new poem, and entitled it "Ruby." After we had stayed at the seaside for about five weeks we returned home, and my mistress did not engage a second servant for the present. My duties increased and I had less time to spare than before, but still filled the few moments of leisure I could find with the study of the English language. One day I came across a book by Milton, and in spite of my defective knowledge of the language, read most eagerly his "Paradise Lost," and was overwhelmed by the picturesque language and by the bold imagination and grandeur of the whole. Many, many times, also, I looked up the page on which was written: