Imagine such a light-hearted daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of society, the charming spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasures of beauty and youth, suddenly flashing into the dim life of three weary old men--suddenly dropped into the place, of all others, which is least fit for her--suddenly shut out from the world in the lonely quiet of the loneliest home in England.

Realize, if it be possible, all that is most whimsical and most anomalous in such a situation as this, and the startling confession contained in the opening sentence of these pages will no longer excite the faintest emotion of surprise.

Who can wonder now, when our bright young goddess really descended on us, that I and my brothers were all three at our wits' end what to do with her!.