“There, then. When I am gone you must get that young lady to dress you.” “On no account.” “Why? She is a very nice young lady. I hope you mean to behave prettily to her, Missy, and not show your airs.” “She shall dress me on no account.” “Comical little thing!” “You are not passing the comb straight through my hair, Harriet; the line will be crooked.” “Ay, you are ill to please. Does that suit?” “Pretty well. Where should I go now that I am dressed?” “I will take you into the breakfast-room.” “Come, then.” They proceeded to the door. She stopped. “Oh! Harriet, I wish this was papa’s house! I don’t know these people.” “Be a good child, Missy.” “I am good, but I ache here;” putting her hand to her heart, and moaning while she reiterated, “Papa! papa!” I roused myself and started up, to check this scene while it was yet within bounds. “Say good-morning to the young lady,” dictated Harriet. She said, “Good-morning,” and then followed her nurse from the room. Harriet temporarily left that same day, to go to her own friends, who lived in the neighbourhood. On descending, I found Paulina (the child called herself Polly, but her full name was Paulina Mary) seated at the breakfast-table, by Mrs. Bretton’s side; a mug of milk stood before her, a morsel of bread filled her hand, which lay passive on the table-cloth: she was not eating. “How we shall conciliate this little creature,” said Mrs. Bretton to me, “I don’t know: she tastes nothing, and by her looks, she has not slept.” I expressed my confidence in the effects of time and kindness. “If she were to take a fancy to anybody in the house, she would soon settle; but not till then,” replied Mrs. Bretton. CHAPTER II. PAULINA. Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was not likely to take much of a fancy to anybody in the house. She was not exactly naughty or wilful: she was far from disobedient; but an object less conducive to comfort—to tranquillity even—than she presented, it was scarcely possible to have before one’s eyes. She moped: no grown person could have performed that uncheering business better; no furrowed face of adult exile, longing for Europe at Europe’s antipodes, ever bore more legibly the signs of home sickness than did her infant visage. She seemed growing old and unearthly. I, Lucy Snowe, plead guiltless of that curse, an overheated and discursive imagination; but whenever, opening a room-door, I found her seated in a corner alone, her head in her pigmy hand, that room seemed to me not inhabited, but haunted. And again, when of moonlight nights, on waking, I beheld her figure, white and conspicuous in its night-dress, kneeling upright in bed, and praying like some Catholic or Methodist enthusiast—some precocious fanatic or untimely saint—I scarcely know what thoughts I had; but they ran risk of being hardly more rational and healthy than that child’s mind must have been.