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Cherry endeavours to remember if she were pretty.—A Water-party.

AND now my Memory flies on to the Time when, I suppose, I was as happy a Girl as any on the Bridge. I know not whether I were pretty or not,—I rather suppose I was, but my Father praised me too much, and my dear Mother never praised me at all, so that I have no Clue to what was really thought of me. There’s an old Saying, “Even a little Beetle is a Beauty in the Eyes of its Mother,”—I am bold to think that if I had been a little Black-beetle, I should still have been a Beauty in the Eyes of my Father. My Mother used to tell him “all his Geese were Swans,” which was as much as to say that hers were not: be that as it may, if she praised me less, I always felt she loved me as much as he did; and I loved her to the full as much as I loved him.

I remember coming down Stairs one Sunday Morning, dressed for Church,—(we had no Liturgy, nor Church of England Clergymen then, such was the Will of Parliament,)—dressed in a primrose Petticoat and grass-green Mantua neatly bundled up behind; black Mits without a Crease in them for Tightness, white Pinners starched and crimped, and a small steeple-crowned Hat,—when Mark, meeting me at the Stair-foot, stepped out of my Way with a sliding Bow, said, “Bless me, how pretty we are!” and looked attentively after me. I felt ashamed and yet elated; and thought somewhat more of myself and of him after that; yet I am not quite sure, now, that his Speech was not ironical, after all.