"It is very clear, from the conversation between Mrs. Harris and Fanny,
that Evelyn passed for a dull child, and had very little to say,
because she had not found anyone since she had left The Grove who would
talk to her in her own way and draw out her young ideas, and encourage
her to tell her thoughts. Her father had encouraged her to talk to him
in her own way whilst he was spared to her; and her nurse had been the
kindest, best of foster-mothers. Though, to be sure, she did speak
broad Berkshire, and though she was what learned people would call an
ignorant woman, nurse had the strongest desire to do right, for she had
been made to feel that God was the friend of His creatures. She felt
sure that He would help those who behaved well; and she did what she
could to teach what she knew to her little girl. She told her that she
must be good, and not proud, or she would never go to the happy world
where angels are. She told her also, that though her mother was gone
into another world, she knew and was sorry when she was naughty.
"Nurse was a particularly generous woman, and was always teaching the
little lady to give things away; and she took great pains to make her
civil to everybody, whether high or low.
"Nurse had loved to be much out of doors, and Evelyn loved it as much;
and the two together used to ramble all about the place, into the
fields and yards where animals were kept, and into the groves and
gardens to watch the birds and butterflies, and to talk to the
gardeners and the old women who weeded the walks. Nurse was always
reminding Evelyn to take something out with her to give away; if it was
nothing else than a roll or a few lumps of sugar from breakfast; for
Evelyn's mother, just before her death, had said to her nurse:
"'My child may be very rich, teach her to think of the wants of the
poor, and to give away.'
"But the more happy Evelyn had been with her nurse, the more sad she
was with Harris. There was not anything which Harris talked of that the
little girl cared for, and the consequence was that she passed for
being very dull; because when Harris was talking of one set of things,
she was thinking of something very different.
"When Harris wanted her to admire herself in her new frocks, when she
was dressed to go down to tea, or at any other time, she was wishing to
have her pinafore on, or that she might run down to her lamb, which fed
in a square yard covered with grass, where the maids dried the clothes.
"Mr. Vaughan had died somewhat suddenly in the spring; the lamb was
then only six weeks old. Evelyn came to live with her aunts immediately
after the funeral; and the summer passed away without anything very
particular happening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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