Astley. And hopes and schemes so wild that I dared not
bring them to the test of my father's ridicule, I poured with pride
into Nurse Bundle's sympathetic ear.
Dear, good, kind Nurse Bundle! She was indeed a mother to me, and a
mother's anxieties and disappointments were her portion. The effect of
her watchful constant care of my early years for me, was whatever good
there was about me in health or manners. The effect of it for her was,
I believe, that she was never thoroughly happy when I was out of her
sight. In these circumstances, it seemed hard that when most of my
infantile diseases were over, when I was just becoming very
intelligent (the best company possible, Mrs. Bundle declared), when I
wore my clothes out reasonably, and had exchanged the cries which
exercise one's lungs in infancy for rational conversation by the
nursery fireside, I should be drawn away from nurse and nursery almost
entirely. It was right and natural, but it was hard. Nurse Bundle felt
it so, but she never complained. When she felt it most, she only said,
"It's all just as it should be." And so it was. Boys and ducklings
must wander off some time, be mothers and hens never so kind! The
world is wide, and duck-ponds are deep.
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