Page:Poems Shore.djvu/21

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Memoir

early showed itself in the construction of a hospital for sick bees.

Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen her very marked leaning towards literature showed itself unmistakably. Then there came signs of delicate health; but the symptoms were not such as to cause definite alarm: they pointed rather to a general want of vigour. Indeed, at no time after this did she manifest the buoyant and active spirits of thoroughly sturdy youth. Her mother and Emily promptly restricted her studies; she was made to rise later than the other children and to join the breakfast of the "grown-ups," in her place at a small table close to her mother. In her quaint fashion she commented on this arrangement, saying "I sit like a bulb, an excrescence, by mamma's side."

At the close of 1838 the home, which had now been fixed in the beautiful New Forest, was broken up, and the whole family migrated to Madeira, in the vain hope of saving the life of that gifted elder sister, which there in six months was brought by consumption to a close. The rest of the family remained a year more in that

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