All about my uncle first; but I keep him to the last. Next, all about Rover, the dog--though for roving, I hardly remember him away from my side! Alas, he did not live to come into the story, but I must mention him here, for I shall not write another book, and, in the briefest summary of my childhood, to make no allusion to him would be disloyalty. I almost believe that at one period, had I been set to say who I was, I should have included Rover as an essential part of myself. His tail was my tail; his legs were my legs; his tongue was my tongue!--so much more did I, as we gambolled together, seem conscious of his joy than of my own! Surely, among other and greater mercies, I shall find him again! The next person I see busy about the place, now here now there in the house, and seldom outside it, is Miss Martha Moon. The house is large, built at a time when the family was one of consequence, and there was always much to be done in it. The largest room in it is now called the kitchen, but was doubtless called the hall when first it was built. This was Miss Martha Moon's headquarters. She was my uncle's second cousin, and as he always called her Martha, so did I, without rebuke: every one else about the place called her Miss Martha. Of much greater worth and much more genuine refinement than tens of thousands the world calls ladies, she never claimed the distinction. Indeed she strongly objected to it. If you had said or implied she was a lady, she would have shrunk as from a covert reflection on the quality of her work. Had she known certain of such as nowadays call themselves lady-helps, I could have understood her objection. I think, however, it came from a stern adherence to the factness--if I may coin the word--of things. She never called a lie a fib. When she was angry, she always held her tongue; she feared being unfair. She had indeed a rare power of silence. To this day I do not _know_, but am nevertheless sure that, by an instinct of understanding, she saw into my uncle's trouble, and descried, more or less plainly, the secret of it, while yet she never even alluded to the existence of such a trouble. She had a regard for woman's dignity as profound as silent. She was not of those that prate or rave about their rights, forget their duties, and care only for what they count their victories. She declared herself dead against marriage. One day, while yet hardly more than a child, I said to her thoughtfully, “I wonder why you hate gentlemen, Martha!” “Hate 'em! What on earth makes you say such a wicked thing, Orbie?” she answered. “Hate 'em, the poor dears! I love 'em! What did you ever see to make you think I hated your uncle now?” “Oh! of course! uncle!” I returned; for my uncle was all the world to me. “Nobody could hate uncle!” “She'd be a bad woman, anyhow, that did!” rejoined Martha. “But did anybody ever hate the person that couldn't do without her, Orbie?”