Indeed, I often wonder now at the
things I did for him, such things as the feminine nature turns from with
horror, although they seem to come naturally enough to a boy.
That day I heard my grandfather and grandmother discussing me.
Theobald was playing in a cricket match in the neighbourhood, and I was
at home, reading in one of the recesses of the library. The book was
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," and I was so lost in the romance and
tenderness of it--I was at that chapter where Harry returns bringing his
sheaves with him--that I did not notice what they were saying till my
own name caught my ears.
I remember that the afternoon had come on wet, and that while I read the
wet branches of the lilac beat against the leaded window. I could see
the flowers through an open pane, and smell their delightful perfume.
There was an apple tree in view, too, with all its blossoms hanging in
pink limpness.
I had forgotten my grandfather and grandmother sitting by the library
fire, within the hooded settle that made the fireside like a little
room; and they had forgotten my presence, if indeed they had known of
it.
"Bawn is the very moral of what I was at her age," my grandmother said.
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