As for me, if my vanity was stronger than my good taste for a while,
the quickness of childish instinct soon convinced me that Miss Burton
had no real affection for me. Then I was puzzled by her spasmodic
attentions when my father was in the room, and her rough repulses when
I "bothered" her at less appropriate moments. I got tired of her, too,
of the sound of her voice, of her black hair and unchanging red
cheeks. And from the day that I caught her beating Rubens for lying on
the edge of her dress, I lived in terror of her. Those rolling black
eyes had not a pleasant look when the lady was out of temper. And was
she really to be the new mistress of the house? To take the place of
my fair, gentle, beautiful mother? That wave of household gossip which
for ever surges behind the master's back was always breaking over me
now, in expressions of pity for the motherless child of "the dear lady
dead and gone."
"I don't like black hair," I announced one day at luncheon; "I like
beautiful, shining, golden hair, like poor mamma's."
"Don't talk nonsense, Reginald," said my father, angrily, and shortly
afterwards I was dismissed to the nursery.
If I had only had my childish memory to trust to, I do not think that
I could have kept so clear a remembrance of my mother as I had.
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