Read it through once

Henry Taylor was born in Reading—the child of K——, Miss Mitford’s companion and hemmer of flounces—and at the mistress’s own request the boy was brought to live at her cottage when he was just upon two years old. He came as a new and welcome interest into her life and, while she petted and spoiled him, gave him wise and tender counsel. “A little boy, called Henry,” she wrote of him in her _Recollections_, “the child of the house (son, by the way, to the hemmer of flounces), has watched my ways, and ministered unbidden to my wants and fancies. Long before he could open the outer door, before, indeed, he was half the height of the wand in question” [her favourite walking-stick], “there he would stand, the stick in one hand, and if it were summer time, a flower in the other, waiting for my going out, the pretty Saxon boy, with his upright figure, his golden hair, his eyes like two stars, and his bright, intelligent smile! We were so used to see him there, silent and graceful as a Queen’s page, that when he returned to school after the holidays, and somebody else presented the stick and the rose, I hardly cared to take them. It seemed as if something was wrong, I missed him so! Most punctual of petted children!”