Now and then, as if recalled by a dream, some broken and shadowy images of a pale face and a slender hand floated vaguely through my mind; but faded even as I strove to realize them.

Sometimes, too, when I was falling off to sleep in my little bed, or making out pictures in the fire on a winter evening, strange fragments of old rhymes seemed to come back upon me, mingled with the tones of a soft voice and the haunting of a long-forgotten melody.

But these, after all, were yearnings more of the heart than the memory:-- "I felt a mother-want about the world.
And still went seeking." To return to my description of my early home:--the two rooms on either side of the hall, facing the road, were appropriated by my father for his surgery and consulting-room; while the two corresponding rooms at the back were fitted up as our general reception-room, and my father's bed-room.

In the former of these, and in the weedy old garden upon which it opened, were passed all the days of my boyhood.
It was my father's good-will and pleasure to undertake the sole charge of my education.

Fain would I have gone like other lads of my age to public school and college; but on this point, as on most others, he was inflexible.