Hyacinthe Author:Elizabeth Caroline Grey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. ' Within my infant breast parental care The living seed of young devotion planted, And watch'd and water'd it—and pray'd and panted That it might ... more »spring, and bud, and blossom there.' For two hours every day, Mary went to the Rectory, where Mrs. Villars instructed her in reading, writing, and needle-work of every kind; farther than that she did not go, with the exception of selecting for her books of a superior order, which expanded and improved her mind, affording her at the same time the most engrossing amusement. May was a child of great natural abilities, with a memory so singularly good, that she could retain with the utmost accuracy any thing she had either read or heard. Mr. Neville's sermons, which were to her subjects of absorbing interest, she could repeat in a most extraordinary manner ; and once during an illness of many weeks' duration, which confined Farmer Wilmot to his house, May regularly repeated to him the sermon, of 38 SUSAN ASHFIELD. which he was unfortunately deprived the benefit of hearing. Brookside Farm was situated in a most retired spot, which afforded so few neighbours that May formed few acquaintance of her own age ; indeed she was brought up so differently from the other children of the village, that Mrs. Wilmot, and her friends at the Rectory, were not anxious that she should associate much with them. However, although she was a child of most retiring manners, she was loved by all who knew her, for never was May found to be unkind; and there was something in her calm and even dignified manner, contrasting so strongly with that of others, and which imparted to her an air of such decided superiority, that there was a degree of respect shewn towards her by every one. One little girl looked up to her with peculiar regard and...« less