"One day--it was a late autumn day I remember, for it was just a few days after my ninth birthday--my birthday is on the fifteenth of November,--my mother told me that my father, having to drive to the town the following day, would take me with him to spend the day with grandmother.
"'And Nelly,' said my mother, 'do try to be very good and behave prettily. I really fear, my dear, that you will never be like a young lady--it is playing so much with your brothers, I suppose, and you know grandmother is very particular. The last time you were there you know you dressed up the cat and frightened poor old Betsy (my grandmother's cook) so. Do try to keep out of mischief this time.'
"'I can't,' I said. 'There is no one to play with there. I would rather stay at home;' and I teased my mother to say I need not go. But it was no good; she was firm about it--it was right that I, the only girl at home, should go to see my grandmother sometimes, and my mother repeated her admonitions as to my behaviour; and as I really loved her dearly I promised to 'try to be very good;' and the next morning I set off with my father in excellent spirits. There was nothing I liked better than a drive with him, especially in rather cold weather, for then he used to tuck me up so beautifully warm in his nice soft rugs, so that hardly anything but the tip of my nose was to be seen, and he would call me his 'little woman' and pet me to my heart's content.
"When we reached my grandmother's I felt very reluctant to descend from my perch, and I said to my father that I wished he would take me about the town with him instead of leaving me there.
"He explained to me that it was impossible--he had all sorts of things to do, a magistrate's meeting to attend, and I don't know all what. Besides which he liked me to be with my grandmother, and he told me I was a silly little goose when I said I was afraid of her.
"My father entered the house without knocking--there was no need to lock doors in the quiet streets of the little old town, where everybody that passed up and down was known by everybody else, and their _business_ often known better by the everybody else than by themselves. We went up to the drawing-room, there was nobody there--my father went out of the room and called up the staircase, 'Mother, where are you?'