Old Kensington

art! O pri

y sense of c

to an

ge of fear

H. N

he same appearing and disappearing. Looking back now-a-days through a score or two of years, Dorothea can see many lights crossing and reflecting one another, many strange places and persons in juxtaposition. She can

ground. This placid-faced Dutchwoman, existing two centuries ago, has some looks still living in the face of the Dorothea Vanborough of these days. Her descendants have changed their name and their dress, cast away their ruffles, forgotten the story of their early origin; but there is still a something that tells of it: in Dolly's slow quaint grace and crumpled bronze hair, in her brother George's black brows, in their aunt Lady Sarah Franci

ll blue) into the ark. Jonah's whale swallowed and disgorged him night after night, as George and Dolly sat at their aunt's knee listening to her stories in the dusk of the

oon after her lord's demise in 1806. This second husband was himself a member of the Vanborough family a certain Colonel Stanham Vanborough, a descendant of the lady over the chimney-piece. He was afterwards killed in the Peninsula. Lady Sarah bitterly resented her mother's marriage, and once said she would never forgive it. It was herself that she never forgave for her own unforgiveness. She was a generous

a Henley, and her fortune consisted chiefly in golden hair and two pearly rows of teeth. The marriage was not so happy as it might have been; trouble came, children died, the poor parents, in fear and trembling, sent their one little boy home to Lady Sarah to save his life. And then, some three years later, their little daughter Dolly was making her way, a young traveller by land and by sea coming from the distant Indian station, where she had been born, to the shelter of the old house in the old by-lane in Kensington. The children found the door open w

out to sea through the leafless forest of shipping; the squalid houses fast closed and double-locked upon their sleeping inmates: the sudden storms of dust and w

r arms, and who is her Aunt Sarah; at the big boy of seven in the red mittens, whose photograph her papa had shown her in the verandah, and who is her brother George; at the luggage as it comes bumping and stumbling off the big ship; at the passengers departing

arah took her straight away, with its brick wall, and ivy creepers, and many-paned windows, and the sto

Dolly, running up, and pulling the child'

ances; they would not think it very strange if they were to see p

e girl like you,' sai

e girl lite m

tle strange girl, hidin

ciavanble,' continues Dolly, who is not shy, and

ittle girl, looking up. 'My name is Rhoda, but the

sing and repassing, the carriage being unpacked, Lady Sarah directing and giving people money, George stumping about in everybody's way, and t

ce, sitting up with crumpled curls and bright warm cheeks. It is not her papa, but Aunt Sarah, who takes her up and kisses her, and tries to comfort her, while the ayah, Nun Comee, who has been lying on the floor, jumps

ut Dolly from the first day had seemed to understand her; she was never afraid

e grim face with the long nose and pinched lips. 'I think you

said Rhoda, who happened

thing; she was very much afraid at first of Dolly; so she was of the ayah, with her brown face and earrings and monkey hands; but soon the ayah went back to India with silver pins in her ears, taking back many messages to the poor child-bereft parents, with

e playmate, who remained behind, frisking along the passages and up and down the landing-places of

se sunshine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of the great Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be found shining among the leaves and dry grasses; of the pond, where the ducks are flapping and diving; of

they learned, and they looked for a time that was never to be-when their father and mother should come home and l

he used to do her lessons with little Rhoda in the slanting school-room at the top of Church House. The little girls d

uch love in the sunshine that streamed upon the old garden; playing together on the terrace that he remembered so well; pulling up the crocuses and the violets that grew in the shade of

her hair crimped; and George was to wear kid-gloves and write a better hand; and she hoped they were very good, and that they sometimes saw their cousin Robert, and wrote to their uncle, Sir Thomas Henley, Henley Court, Smokethwaite,