Dorothy’s cares were divided between the duties of naiad and nursemaid, for the child clung to her as to no one else except her mother.  The thing that pleased her best was to see the two whale-like spouts rise suddenly from the nostrils of the great white horse, curve away from each other aloft in the air, and fall back into the basin on each side of him.  ‘See horse spout,’ she would say moanfully; and that instant, if Dorothy was not present, a messenger would be despatched to her.  On a bright day this would happen repeatedly.  For the sake of renewing her delight, the instant she turned from it, satisfied for the moment, the fountain ceased to play, and the horse remained spoutless, awaiting the revival of the darling’s desire; for she was not content to see him spouting:  she must see him spout.  Then again she would be carried forth to the verge of the marble basin, and gazing up at the rearing animal would say, in a tone daintily wavering betwixt entreaty and command, ‘Spout, horse, spout,’ and Dorothy, looking down from the far-off summit of the tower, and distinguishing by the attitude of the child the moment when she uttered her desire, would instantly, with one turn of her hand, send the captive water shooting down its dark channel to reascend in sunny freedom.

If little Mary Somerset was counted a strange child, the wisdom with which she was wise is no more unnatural because few possess it, than the death of such is premature because they are yet children.  They are small fruits whose ripening has outstripped their growth.  Of such there are some who, by the hot-house assiduities of their friends, heating them with sulphurous stoves, and watering them with subacid solutions, ripen into insufferable prigs.  For them and for their families it is well that Death the gardener should speedily remove them into the open air.  But there are others who, ripening from natural, that is divine causes and influences, are the daintiest little men and women, gentle in the utmost peevishness of their lassitude, generous to share the gifts they most prize, and divinely childlike in their repentances.  Their falling from the stalk is but the passing from the arms of their mothers into those of—­God knows whom—­which is more than enough.

The chief part of little Molly’s religious lessons, I do not mean training, consisted in a prayer or two in rhyme, and a few verses of the kind then in use among catholics.  Here is a prayer which her nurse taught her, as old, I take it, as Chaucer’s time at least:—­

    Hail be thou, Mary, that high sittest in throne! 
    I beseech thee, sweet lady, grant me my boon—­
    Jesus to love and dread, and my life to amend soon,
    And bring me to that bliss that never shall be done.

And here are some verses quite as old, which her mother taught her.  I give them believing that in understanding and coming nearer to our fathers and mothers who are dead, we understand and come nearer to our brothers and sisters who are alive.  I change nothing but the spelling, and a few of the forms of the words.