It is apparent that she read a great deal which would now hardly be considered desirable for little girls, but who can quarrel with the result? Had the bright young mind been starved on Dotty Dimple and Little Prudy books, we might have missed the quaintest bit of autobiography in the English tongue, those few scattered pages which, with her scraps of verse and tender little letters, were so carefully preserved by a loving sister after Pet Maidie's death. Far too young and innocent to be harmed by Tom Jones or the "funny" Doctor Swift, we may perhaps doubt whether she had penetrated very deeply into the Newgate Calendar, notwithstanding a further assertion on her part that "the history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is amusing." But that she had the "little knolege" she boasted of Shakespeare is proven by the fact that her recitations from King John affected Scott, to use his own words, "as nothing else could do." He would sob outright when the little creature on his knee repeated, quivering with suppressed emotion, those heart-breaking words of Constance:—
