THE CINDERELLA OF THE FAMILY 5 



cutlery they possessed. There was no love lost be- 

 tween a brother of twenty, who could thus bully a 

 sister o four or five, and make himself disagreeable 

 all round. It would have been odd had he not sown 

 in the girl's mind a plentiful crop of dislike or hatred. 

 Alexander, so much nearer herself in age, was less 

 disliked, but does not seem to have been, at first, much 

 more loved. At one time it seemed as if he thought 

 himself entitled to imitate the lordly ways of Jacob, 

 and his contempt of the little sister, shy, small for her 

 age, and uneducated even in the family inheritance, 

 music. William, on the other hand, was a family 

 idol to the girl and her parents. When she failed to 

 find him and her father on the parade-ground after a 

 year's absence from home, and returned to the house 

 to see them all seated at table, "my dear brother 

 William threw down his knife and fork, and ran to 

 welcome, and crouched down to me, which made me 

 forget all my grievances." The young soldier, the 

 hero of her romance, was then eighteen years of age ; 

 the girl was six. Could a more charming picture of 

 brotherly love have been drawn, or a firmer foundation 

 laid for the sisterly affection that continued unim- 

 paired through half a century of toilsome and absorb- 

 ing work ? With much difficulty the girl was allowed 

 to receive some sewing lessons at a school where 

 girls of higher rank were taught. It was the means 

 of introducing her to a young lady who, as Mrs. 

 Beckedorff, became a lifelong friend and companion 

 at Windsor, and, sixty years later, at Hanover. 

 Caroline was, as she says herself, the Cinderella of 

 the family. " I could never find time," she wrote in 

 1838, " for improving myself in many things I knew, 



