When I was drest in my new frock, I wished poor mamma was alive to see how fine I was on papa’s wedding-day, and I ran to my favourite station at her bed-room door.  There I sat thinking of my mamma, and trying to remember exactly how she used to look; because I foolishly imagined that miss Saville was to be changed into something like my own mother, whose pale and delicate appearance in her last illness was all that I retained of her remembrance.

When my father returned home with his bride, he walked up stairs to look for me, and my new mamma followed him.  They found me at my mother’s door, earnestly looking through the keyhole; I was thinking so intently on my mother, that when my father said, “Here is your new mamma, my Elinor,” I turned round, and began to cry, for no other reason than because she had a very high colour, and I remembered my mamma was very pale; she had bright black eyes, my mother’s were mild blue eyes; and that instead of the wrapping gown and close cap in which I remembered my mamma, she was drest in all her bridal decorations.

I said, “Miss Saville shall not be my mamma,” and I cried till I was sent away in disgrace.

Every time I saw her for several days, the same notion came into my head, that she was not a bit more like mamma than when she was miss Saville.  My father was very angry when he saw how shy I continued to look at her; but she always said, “Never mind.  Elinor and I shall soon be better friends.”

One day, when I was very naughty indeed, for I would not speak one word to either of them, my papa took his hat, and walked out quite in a passion.  When he was gone, I looked up at my new mamma, expecting to see her very angry too; but she was smiling and looking very good-naturedly upon me; and she said, “Now we are alone together, my pretty little daughter, let us forget papa is angry with us; and tell me why you were peeping through that door the day your papa brought me home, and you cried so at the sight of me.”  “Because mamma used to be there,” I replied.  When she heard me say this, she fell a-crying very sadly indeed; and I was so very sorry to hear her cry so, that I forgot I did not love her, and I went up to her, and said, “Don’t cry, I won’t be naughty any more, I won’t peep through the door any more.”

Then she said I had a little kind heart, and I should not have any occasion, for she would take me into the room herself; and she rung the bell, and ordered the key of that room to be brought to her; and the housekeeper brought it, and tried to persuade her not to go.  But she said, “I must have my own way in this;” and she carried me in her arms into my mother’s room.

O I was so pleased to be taken into mamma’s room!  I pointed out to her all the things that I remembered to have belonged to mamma and she encouraged me to tell her all the little incidents which had dwelt on my memory concerning her.  She told me, that she went to school with mamma when she was a little girl, and that I should come into this room with her every day when papa was gone out, and she would tell me stories of mamma when she was a little girl no bigger than me.