I felt myself too much moved by the associations connected with it, and called up by her, to answer readily; and she, as if conjecturing this, led the conversation gently off, at first to painting in general, and afterwards, as I grew more at my ease with her, back again, with an appearance of genuine interest, to mine.
"There was one little shell," said she, "in your native group, which was quite new to me, and—which is more remarkable—to my brother."
"Was it like this?" asked I, taking a specimen from my paint-box.
"Precisely. We felt sure the portrait must be true to life, because all its companions were such faithful likenesses; and then it had itself such an honest, genuine, individual look. But is it to be found on this coast?"
"Yes. If Mr. Dudley has not met with it, it must no doubt be very rare; but, near the same spot always, just beyond Cedar Point, under the rocks in the little cove that lies farthest to the south, I have found it more than once."
"You must be quite an enthusiast in natural history. Have you studied it long?"
"No, ma'am, never. I mean," continued I, answering her look of surprise, "never from books. I believe I should enjoy it more than any other study; but I know so little yet of other things, and there are so many other things that one needs more to know." I felt my cheeks burn; for no sooner was I helplessly launched into this speech, than I perceived what an awkward one it was to make to the sister of an eminent naturalist. Notwithstanding, as I thought it was true, I could not take it back.
"I agree with you entirely," said she with a reassuring smile. "Such studies are fitted much more for the coping-stones than the foundation-stones of a good education. But then, if you will not think me too inquisitive, pray let me ask you one thing more; and that is, where and how you came by all the information that that group showed."
"Only by playing on the beaches and in the woods when I was a child. My mother did not like to keep me in, because she thought that that had impaired my sister"—here my voice would break, but I would go on,—Fanny's dear name should not die out of memory while I lived—"my sister Fanny's health; but they were afraid to let me run quite wild, and so she—my sister—led me out often wherever I wished to go, and helped me fill a little pasteboard museum which she made for me."
Miss Dudley's large, soft, trusty brown eyes met mine tenderly, as she said: "These things must indeed possess a more than common interest for you then. Have you that museum now?"
"No, ma'am; I sometimes wish I had. I gave it away when I went to Greenville to keep school," I added; not that I supposed it would matter anything to her, but that I thought it just as well to make sure of her understanding my position in life.
"That is so natural to us all,—to part with these little relics when we are still very young, and then to wish them back again before we are much older! You would smile to see a little museum that I keep for my brother,—not his scientific collection, which I hope some day to have the pleasure of showing you,—but 'an olla podrida in an ancestral wardrobe,' as my little Paul calls it, of his and my two little nieces' first baby-shoes, rattles, corals, and bells, wooden horses, primers, picture-books, and so forth, down to the cups and balls, and copy-books, which they have cast off within a month or two, each labelled with the owner's name, and the date of deposit. No year goes by without leaving behind some memento of each of them, or even without my laying aside there some trifling articles of dress that they have worn. It is a fancy of my brother's. He says that others may claim their after-years, but their childhood is his own,—all of it that is not mine,—and he must keep it for himself, and for them when they
