As it was, she was utterly unlike her two sisters, Mary and Katherine, being a precocious child, fonder of books than of play, and doubtless was less rugged in after years than if she had romped through meadow and marsh as they did, or waded in the clear brook that babbled its way through the woodland depths of Bradgate forests. Instead, while the other girls ran races, or played some boisterous game of childhood, we have glimpses of demure little Jane, even then as pretty as a doll in her quaint dress, fashioned on the model of that worn by her own mother, either sitting quietly in the house, so absorbed in her book that friend or foe might have approached unnoticed, or on the velvety lawn surrounding the Manor House, intent on some dry treatise, far above the understanding of an ordinary child, looking up now and then to glance off at the wonderful view spread out below her--a view so extensive that it overlooked seven counties of England. There, at beautiful Bradgate, Lady Jane spent the first seven years of her life, busy with the endless resources at her command, and studying with her sisters under the instruction of the Reverend Mr. Harding, who was the chaplain of Bradgate--after the custom of those days--and it was he who laid the firm foundation of that devotion to the Protestant religion which was so strongly marked in Lady Jane's after life. Until Jane was seven years old she did not accompany her parents on their many visits to relatives of noble blood, or when they went to Court, for she was considered too small for that until she was eight years old, when she was occasionally taken with her family to London or elsewhere. Lady Frances Dorset, Jane's mother, was a niece of King Henry the Eighth, and so the Dorsets belonged to the brilliantly extravagant court circle of the famously extravagant Henry, and in her ninth year Lady Jane began to visit frequently her royal great-uncle, who was said to be as fond of children as he was of pastry, and doubtless enjoyed having Jane, an exceptionally bright, pretty girl, to divert his thoughts when the pains in his gouty limbs were unusually severe. And Queen Katherine, too, was a deeply affectionate aunt, and as soon as it was allowed, kept Jane constantly with her, directing the child's studies herself, and giving her the freedom of the Queen's own private apartments, where keen-eyed, quick-witted little Jane must have seen and heard much by which a more stupid child would not have benefited, but which Jane stored up for future reference,--especially the discussions between the Queen and those learned theologians with whom she so often talked, and many a scene of which Lady Jane was witness has been recorded in history. [Illustration: LADY JANE GREY]