OLD KENSINGTON

BY MISS THACKERAY

LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO.,
15 WATERLOO PLACE
1908.

[All rights reserved]

A DEDICATION

TO SOME NEW FRIENDS.

Sometimes new friends meet one along the mid-way of life, and come forward with sweet unknown faces and with looks that seem strangely familiar to greet us.

To some of these new friends I must dedicate my story. It was begun ten years ago, and is older than my god-daughter Margie herself, who is the oldest among them. She is playing with her sister and her little cousins in the sunny Eton nurseries. Harry has a crown on. Annie is a queen who flies on errands. Ada and Lilly are Court ladies.

My neighbour Dolly and the little Dorotheas, however, have a first right to a presentation copy. It is true that the little ones cannot read, but they need not regret it; for Margie will take them on her knee and show them the pictures, and Georgie and Stella and Molly shall stand round too, and dark-eyed little Margaret can tell them her own sweet little stories, while Francis chimes in from the floor. Eleanor cannot talk, but she can sing; and so can our Laura at home and her song is her own; a sweet home song; the song of all children to those who love them. It tells of the past, and one day brings it back without a pang; it tells of a future, not remorselessly strange and chill and unknown, but bound to us by a thousand hopes and loving thoughts—a kingdom-come for us all, not of strangers, but of little children. And meanwhile Laura, measures the present with her soft little fingers as she beats time upon her mother's hand to her own vague music.

8 Southwell Gardens: March 20, 1873

CONTENTS.

A DEDICATION
CHAPTER I. Bricks and Ivy
CHAPTER II. Dutch Tiles
CHAPTER III. To Old Street by the Lanes
CHAPTER IV. An Afternoon at Penfold's
CHAPTER V. Steel Pens and Goose Quills
CHAPTER VI. Downstairs in the Dark
CHAPTER VII. Cloud-capped Towers and Gorgeous Palaces
CHAPTER VIII. Immortelles
CHAPTER IX. The Bow-windowed House
CHAPTER X. A Snow Garden
CHAPTER XI. Raban meets the Shabby Angel
CHAPTER XII. Dorothea by Firelight
CHAPTER XIII. Little Brother and Little Sister
CHAPTER XIV. Rag Dolls
CHAPTER XV. George's Tunes
CHAPTER XVI. A Walking Party
CHAPTER XVII. 'Inner Life'
CHAPTER XVIII. An Autumn Morning
CHAPTER XIX. Kensington Palace Chapel
CHAPTER XX. Rhoda to Dolly
CHAPTER XXI. Cinders
CHAPTER XXII. Mrs. Palmer
CHAPTER XXIII. The Terrace at All Saints' College
CHAPTER XXIV. Roses have Thorns, and Silver Fountains Mud
CHAPTER XXV. Good-night