My own temptations did not lie toward jealousy, which was one reason perhaps that I had so much patience with Lucille; for I have observed that people usually have the least toleration for the faults most resembling their own. I was always, from my earliest years, a dreamy, imaginative child. I heard but little of the world—that world in which my uncle and aunt lived at court. But now and then I got a peep at it through the medium of the plays and tales which my other uncle would persist in sending—for I am sorry to say that I had more than once repeated the offence of stealing and studying some of these books—and this same world had great charms for me. I had been less with my mother than usual for some months, for she and my father had many private consultations from which I was excluded. I used to take my work to the top of the old tower or out in the orchard, and while my fingers were busy with my stocking or my pattern, my fancy was making me a grand demoiselle, and leading me to balls and gardens and all the scenes of the English court. Of the English court, I say, for my wildest dreams at that time never led me to the court of Louis XIV. That was too closely associated with the dangers and inconveniences of our condition for me to think of it with anything but horror. Thus I spent many hours worse than unprofitably. Then my conscience would be aroused by some Bible reading with my mother or some tale of suffering heroism from my father, and I would cast aside my dreams and return to those religious duties which at other times were utterly distasteful to me. In short, I was double-minded, and as such was unstable in all my ways. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. TRUST AND DISTRUST. "YOU are to have a holiday to-day, Mrs. Vevette," was Grace's announcement to me one fine morning somewhere toward the end of September. "Your mother has one of her bad headaches." "Oh, how sorry I am!" I exclaimed, thinking not of the holiday but of the headache. "Is it very bad, Mrs. Grace?" "Very bad indeed," returned the lady-in-waiting, solemnly shaking her head; "I have seldom seen her worse. I have been up with her half the night. You must be very quiet, my dear, and not rush up and down-stairs, or drop your books, or—" "May I go up to the farm and see Mother Jeanne?" I asked, breaking in upon the catalogue of what Grace called my "headlong ways." "I want to teach Lucille that new lace-stitch, and I dare say Jeanne won't mind if I do make a little noise," I added, with some resentment. Not, of course, that I wished to disturb my mother, or indeed any one else, but I was a little tired of this same catalogue, which had been rehearsed so many times. "There you go again, breaking right into the middle of a sentence," said Grace. "What would your mother say?" "Perhaps she would say, 'Don't be always lecturing the child, Grace,'" said I mischievously, quoting some words I had overheard from my mother.