Page:Poems Shore.djvu/26

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Memoir

rising barrister a letter from the well-known A. W. Kinglake asking him to take a brief for him as he (Kinglake) had business elsewhere. A friend standing by (a literary critic) inquired of her if she did not think that was "selling his client." The young girl answered promptly, "Not at all; if the client could trust Mr. Kinglake with his cause, he might trust him with the choice of a substitute." "I give you credit for the answer," said the lawyer. The philosophical reviewer was silent, but smiled approval.

But perhaps her chief happiness was in the companionship of her one sister, and their still younger brother, with whom much time was delightfully passed in boatings on the river. The boy had some fine gifts of his own, and became intensely dear to both. But when he left them as an emigrant to Australia, and, in thus severing the merry group, robbed the Sunbury life of much of its glamour, deeper interests began to fill the void. Louisa's attachment to her mother had been hitherto her most conspicuous family trait; now, without diminishing this, began the ardent affection for her sister,

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