A Farmer’s Life 
tale there was. Laughing, she disclaimed all 
knowledge of it in her old age, when I tried to 
tease her for having stuffed me up with history 
of a boy who broke his leg because he put matches 
under his pillow at night. Ann knew nothing 
about it; but the fact that she was associated with 
my memory of it shows how she had become 
bound up with my infancy. Truly, she was a 
second mother to us children at Farnham. Not 
that I, for one, cared. The arrangement must 
have lasted ten years or so; but I seem hardly to 
have noticed when it ended, and I never knew 
why. Want of bedrooms may well have obliged 
her to go; or perhaps want of family income. 
Anyhow, to me, self-centred little prig that I 
was, these matters were utterly unimportant. I 
only remember, now, that a time came when Aunt 
Ann was known to have gone as housekeeper to 
some strange family at Sevenoaks, and I recall 
dimly having understood that she wasn’t very 
happy there. I understood it to be a pity; for I 
don’t think it was ever suggested that she met 
with anything but kindness, and it was unlikely 
to enter my head that a grown-up aunt might be 
homesick. 
How many years this lasted I don’t know. It 
came to an end dreadfully at last, and Ann had to 
go back to her old farm home, not now as a care- 
less child. 
186 
