She thought he might have made something of an apology for the disagreeableness of his friend; but, being used to it, and forgetting that she was not, he did no such thing; and she was wondering that cottage visiting could ever have been represented as so pleasant an occupation, when he began on a far more interesting subject, asking about her mother’s health, and how she thought Knight Sutton agreed with her, saying how very glad he was to have her there again, and how like his own daughter she had always been.  He went on to tell of his first sight of his two daughters-in-law, when, little guessing that they would be such, he went to fetch home the little Mary Vivian, who had come from India under the care of General St. Leger.  “There they were,” said he; “I can almost see them now, as their black nurse led them in; your aunt a brown little sturdy thing, ready to make acquaintance in a moment, and your mamma such a fair, shrinking, fragile morsel of a child, that I felt quite ashamed to take her among all my great scrambling boys.”

“Ah! mamma says her recollection is all in bits and scraps; she recollects the ship, and she remembers sitting on your knee in a carriage; but she cannot remember either the parting with Aunt Geoffrey or the coming here.”

“I do not remember about the parting with Aunt Geoffrey; they managed that in the nursery, I believe, but I shall never forget the boys receiving her,—­Fred and Geoffrey, I mean,—­for Roger was at school.  How they admired her like some strange curiosity, and played with her like a little girl with a new doll.  There was no fear that they would be too rough with her, for they used to touch her as if she was made of glass.  And what a turn out of old playthings there was in her service!”

“That was when she was six,” said Henrietta, “and papa must have been ten.”

“Yes, thereabouts, and Geoffrey a year younger.  How they did pet her! and come down to all their old baby-plays again for her sake, till I was almost afraid that cricket and hockey would be given up and forgotten.”

“And were they?”

“No, no, trust boys for that.  Little Mary came to be looker on, if she did not sometimes play herself.  She was distressed damsel, and they knight and giant, or dragon, or I cannot tell what, though many’s the time I have laughed over it.  Whatever they pleased was she:  never lived creature more without will of her own.”

“Never,” responded Henrietta; but that for which Mr. Langford might commend his little Mary at seven years old, did not appear so appropriate a subject of observation in Mrs. Frederick Langford, and by her own daughter.

“Eh!” said her grandfather.  Then answering his mental objection in another tone, “Ay, ay, no will for her own pleasure; that depends more on you than on any one else.”

“I would do anything on earth for her!” said Henrietta, feeling it from the bottom of her heart.