In the meantime, like all selfish persons, I considered what demeanor I should assume, in order to impress my grandmother with a conviction of my own consequence.  Of course, dignified and unbending I would be; but what if she chose to consider me a child, and treat me accordingly?  The idea was agonizing to my feelings; but then I proudly surveyed my five feet two inches of height, and wondered how I could have thought of such a thing!  Still I had sense enough to know that such a supposition would never have entered my head, had there not been sufficient grounds for it; and, with no small trepidation, I prepared for my first appearance.

It went off as first appearances generally do.  I was to have been seated in an attitude of great elegance, with my eyes fixed on the pages of some wonderfully wise book, but my thoughts anywhere but in company with my eyes; while, to give more dignity to a girlish figure, my hair was to be turned up on the very top of my head with a huge shell comb, borrowed for the occasion from mamma’s drawer.  Upon my grandmother’s entrance, I intended to rise and make her a very stiff courtesy, and then deliver a series of womanish remarks.  This, I say, was to have been my first appearance—­but alas! fate ordered otherwise.  I was caught by my dignified relative indulging in a game of romps upon the balcony with two or three little sisters in pinafores and pantalettes—­myself as much a child as any of them.  My grandmother came rather suddenly upon me as, with my long hair floating in wild confusion, I stooped to pick up my comb; and while in this ungraceful position, one of the little urchins playfully climbed upon my back, while the others held me down.  My three little sisters had never appeared to such disadvantage in my eyes, as they did at the present moment; in vain I tried to shake them off—­they only clung the closer, from fright, on being told of their grandmother’s arrival.

At length, with crimsoned cheeks, and the hot tears starting to my eyes, I rose and received, rather than returned the offered embrace, and found myself in the capacious arms of one whom I should have taken for an old dowager duchess.  On glancing at my grandmother’s portly figure and consequential air, I experienced the uncomfortable sensation of utter insignificance—­I encountered the gaze of those full, piercing eyes, and felt that I was conquered.  Still I resolved to make some struggles for my dignity yet, and not submit until defeat was no longer doubtful.  People in talking of “unrequited affection,” speak of “the knell of departed hopes,” but no knell could sound more dreadful to the ears of a girl in her teens—­trembling for her scarcely-fledged young-lady-hood—­than did the voice of my grandmother, (and it was by no means low), as she remarked: 

“So this is Ella.  Why, how the child has altered!  I remember her only as a little, screaming baby, that was forever holding its breath with passion till it became black in the face.  Many a thumping have I given you, child, to make you come to, and sometimes I doubted if your face ever would be straight again.  Even now it can hardly be said to belong to the meek and amiable order.”