to establish communication. She did not try over hard; she was sensitive to ridicule; it was easier to retire within her childish self, be her own confidante and questioner.

She had an intricate imagination and before she learned to read had created for herself a fantastically complete inner world, in which she moved, absorbed and satisfied. Indeed, her outward surroundings became at last so dangerously shadowy that her manner began to show how entire was her abstraction, and Mrs. Denny, sworn foe to "sulks" and "moping," saw fit to engage a governess as an antidote.

The governess, a colourless lady, achieved little, though she was useful in taking the little boys for walks. But she taught Louise to read, and thereafter the child assumed entire charge of her own education.

The mother's books, velvety with dust that had sifted down upon them since the day, six years back, when they had been tumbled in piles on an attic floor by busy maids preparing for the advent of the second Mrs. Denny, were discovered, one rainy day, by a pinafored Siegfried, alert[53] for treasure. Contented years were passed in consuming the trove.

[53]

Her mother's choice of books was so completely to her taste that they gave the lonely child her first experience of mental companionship; suggesting to her that there might be other intelligences in the world about her than the kindly, stolid folk who cherished her growing body and ignored her growing mind. She was almost startled at times to realise how completely this vague mother of hers would have understood her. Each new volume, fanciful or quizzical or gracious, seemed a direct gift from an invisible yet human personality, that concerned itself with her as no other had ever done; that was never occupied with the dustiness of the attic, or a forgotten tea-hour, but was astonishingly sensitive to the needs of a little soul, struggling unaided to birth. The pile of books, to her hungry affections, became the temple, the veritable dwelling-place of her mother's spirit.

Seated on the sun-baked floor, book on knee, the noises of the high road floating up to her, distance-dulled and soothing, she would shake her thick hair across her face, and see through its veil a melting, shifting shadow of a hand that helped to turn her pages. The warm floor was a soft lap; the battered trunk a shoulder that supported; the faint breeze a kiss upon her lips. The fantastic qualities the mother had bequeathed, recreated her in the mind of her child, bringing 

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