Such things as these may seem apart and not of much interest, and very likely that is true enough; but to me they were everything, making up as they did my life when young, as they do, in fact, the lives of most country-bred youths. Looking back to it now, from under a fast-fading sun, its quiet and beauty, peaceful beyond measure, cause a sigh of regret as at some far-off vision that can never return, nor anything like unto it. When I had been in my new home some weeks, Mr. Blake fell into a habit of gazing upon me in a fixed, heavy way for hours at a time, and as if grieved at something beyond expression. Anxious as to the cause, I lost no time in speaking to Mrs. Blake about it, and what she said I thought remarkable; nor could I by any means understand it, or any part of it, so little do the young know the springs of human sympathy or liking. For it seemed that at the time of Constance’s and my first visit great patches of freckles covered my face, and in these Mr. Blake saw a dear resemblance to his dead son, who, it appeared, was similarly marked. Now, with return of strength, the freckles one by one fading out of my face, he watched their going with surprise at first and then with grief, until in the end, all being gone, it seemed to him as if he had lost his son anew. Encouraged by his wife, however, he after a while overcame his despondency, treating me with gentle kindness, as before, but never, I thought, with the warmth I had noticed in him at first. Mrs. Blake, happily, having no such cause of disappointment, grew in her liking for me, so she would often say, with each passing day. The reason of this was, I think, that matronly women, such as she, when deprived of children, ever thus regard with increasing interest the thing, whatever it may be, which they set apart to fill the void in their lives. Thus she regarded me, and each day redoubled her efforts to win my love, and in this was so completely successful that as long as she lived I never ceased to regard her with the tender affection her great heart merited.