That was always her favourite reading, and I can
never think of her without the association of its browny-
yellow cover.
She is a very well-read woman is the mother; she
keeps up to date in French literature as well as in
English, and can talk by the hour about the
Goncourts, and Flaubert, and Gautier. Yet she is always
hard at work; and how she imbibes all her knowledge is a
mystery. She reads when she knits, she reads when she
scrubs, she even reads when she feeds her babies. We
have a little joke against her, that at an interesting
passage she deposited a spoonful of rusk and milk into my
little sister's car-hole, the child having turned her
head at the critical instant. Her hands are worn with
work, and yet where is the idle woman who has read as
much?
Then, there is her family pride. That is a very
vital portion of the mother. You know how little I think
of such things. If the Esquire were to be snipped once
and for ever from the tail of my name I should be the
lighter for it. But, ma foi!--to use her own
favourite expletive--it would not do to say this to her.
On the Packenham side (she is a Packenham) the family can
boast of some fairly good men--I mean on the direct
line--but when we get on the side branches there is not
a monarch upon earth who does not roost on that huge
family tree. Not once, nor twice, but thrice did the
Plantagenets intermarry with us, the Dukes of Brittany
courted our alliance, and the Percies of
Northumberland intertwined themselves with our whole
illustrious record.
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