We and the World, Part I | Page 3

but my dear mother was inclined to regard me as a genius,
whose learning might bring renown of a new kind into the family. In a
quiet way of her own, as she went gently about household matters, or
knitted my father's stockings, she was a great day-dreamer--one of the
most unselfish kind, however; a builder of air-castles, for those she
loved to dwell in; planned, fitted, and furnished according to the
measure of her affections.
It was perhaps because my father always began by disparaging her
suggestions that (by the balancing action of some instinctive sense of
justice) he almost always ended by adopting them, whether they were
wise or foolish. He came at last to listen very tolerantly when she
dilated on my future greatness.
"And if he isn't quite so good a farmer as Jem, it's not as if he were the
eldest, you know, my dear. I'm sure we've much to be thankful for that
dear Jem takes after you as he does. But if Jack turns out a genius,
which please God we may live to see and be proud of, he'll make plenty
of money, and he must live with Jem when we're gone, and let Jem
manage it for him, for clever people are never any good at taking care
of what they get. And when their families get too big for the old house,
love, Jack must build, as he'll be well able to afford to do, and Jem
must let him have the land. The Ladycroft would be as good as
anywhere, and a pretty name for the house. It would be a good thing to
have some one at that end of the property too, and then the boys would
always be together."

Poor dear mother! The kernel of her speech lay in the end of it--"The
boys would always be together." I am sure in her tender heart she
blessed my bookish genius, which was to make wealth as well as fame,
and so keep me "about the place," and the home birds for ever in the
nest.
I knew nothing of it then, of course; but at this time she used to turn my
father's footsteps towards the Ladycroft every Sunday, between the
services, and never wearied of planning my house.
She was standing one day, her smooth brow knitted in perplexity,
before the big pink thorn, and had stood so long absorbed in this brown
study, that my father said, with a sly smile,
"Well, love, and where are you now?"
"In the dairy, my dear," she answered quite gravely. "The window is to
the north of course, and I'm afraid the thorn must come down."
My father laughed heartily. He had some sense of humour, but my
mother had none. She was one of the sweetest-tempered women that
ever lived, and never dreamed that any one was laughing at her. I have
heard my father say she lay awake that night, and when he asked her
why she could not sleep he found she was fretting about the pink thorn.
"It looked so pretty to-day, my dear; and thorns are so bad to move!"
My father knew her too well to hope to console her by joking about it.
He said gravely: "There's plenty of time yet, love. The boys are only
just in trousers; and we may think of some way to spare it before we
come to bricks and mortar."
"I've thought of it every way, my dear, I'm afraid," said my mother with
a sigh. But she had full confidence in my father--a trouble shared with
him was half cured, and she soon fell asleep.
She certainly had a vivid imagination, though it never was cultivated to
literary ends. Perhaps, after all, I inherited that idle fancy, those

unsatisfied yearnings of my restless heart, from her! Mental
peculiarities are said to come from one's mother.
It was Jem who inherited her sweet temper.
Dear old Jem! He and I were the best of good friends always, and that
sweet temper of his had no doubt much to do with it. He was very
much led by me, though I was the younger, and whatever mischief we
got into it was always my fault.
It was I who persuaded him to run away from school, under the, as it
proved, insufficient disguise of walnut-juice on our faces and hands. It
was I who began to dig the hole which was to take us through from the
kitchen-garden to the other side of the world. (Jem helped me to fill it
up again, when the gardener made a fuss about our having chosen the
asparagus-bed as the point of departure, which we did because the earth
was soft there.) In desert islands or castles, balloons or boats,