"You have talked enough now, my dear Heather. Lie down and go to sleep." "When will she come again?" I asked. "You have talked enough. I am not going to answer any silly questions. Lie down and sleep." I was very sleepy, and I suppose that when you are really as weak as I was then, you don't feel things very much. Now I allowed Aunt Penelope to lay me flat down in my little bed, and closing my eyes I forgot everything in slumber. Those are my first memories. I got well, of course, of that childish illness, and Aunt Penelope by and by explained things to me. Anastasia was not coming back at all, and father had gone to India. Aunt Penelope was rather restrained and rather queer when she spoke of father. She told me also that she had the entire charge of me, and that I was being brought up at her expense, as father had no money to spend on me. She gave me to understand that she was a very poor woman, and could not afford any servant except Buttons, or Jonas, as she called him. She said she preferred a boy in the house to a woman, for he was smarter at going messages and a greater protection at night. I could not understand half what she said. Almost all her narrative was mixed with injunctions to me to be good, to be very good, to love my aunt more than anyone in the world, but to love God best. When I stoutly declared that I loved father better than anyone in any world, she said I was a naughty child. I did not mind that--I kept on saying that I loved father best. Then I got quite well and was sent to school, to a funny sort of little day school, where I did not learn a great deal, but made friends slowly with other children. I liked school better than home, for Aunt Penelope was always saying, "Don't, don't!" or, "You mustn't, you mustn't!" when I was at home; and as I never knew why I should not do the things she said I was not to do, I kept on doing them in a sort of bewilderment. But at school there were rules of a sort, and I followed them as attentively as I could. Thus the years went by, and from a little girl of eight years of age I was a tall, slender girl of eighteen, grown up--yes, grown up at last, and I was waiting for father, who was coming back for good, and my heart was full to the brim with longing to see him. CHAPTER IV During all these long years I had grown to tolerate Aunt Penelope. I found that her bark was worse than her bite; I found, too, that if I let her alone, she let me alone. She was always changing Buttons, and the new boy was invariably called Jonas, just as the last had been. The parrot kept on living, and kept on shouting at intervals every day, "Stop knocking at the door!" but he never would learn any fresh words, although I tried hard to teach him. He did not like me, and snapped at me when I endeavoured to be kind to him. So I concluded that he was a kind of "double" of Aunt Penelope, and left him alone.