Excerpt from Bric-a-Brac Stories

Some three years before the opening of our story, Regi's mother had passed away from life, and his father, always a busy man, had plunged deeper into the affairs that kept him almost a stranger to his family. Soon after, Miss Lynch appeared upon the scene, and suddenly, no one knew exactly how or Why, honest Mistress Flanagan, shedding a Niagara of tears and blessings over her nurseling, betook herself and her belongings out of the house where she had lived since Fred wore kilted petticoats. Regi, found by the new governess kicking on the nursery floor and howling for his Chickabiddy, was requested by that lady to accompany her on a visit to his grandmamma's, a proceeding at all times calculated to subdue the infant spirit. Regi owed his governess to the recommendation of grandmamma, herself an invalid old lady with nerves, who lived in a great silent house in Washington Square, attended by a companion whose duty it was to talk about medicines and symptoms, to fetch Shawls and to feed the cocka too. After a call on grandmamma, the little boy would prance and caper like a colt in pasture, when he got into the open air again.

Miss Lynch was a tall, gray woman, with cold eyes, and a measured way of speaking. She had a rigid back, and once, when, in the fulness of his affectionate spirit, the boy ventured upon giving her a hug, he was awed by the creaking of whalebone of which she seemed to be composed. At her waist she wore a bunch of clank mg keys, and a silver watch that Regi came to look upon as the controlling power of his life. At the bid ding of that monitor he had to get up, to bathe, to dress, to eat his porridge, to study, to exercise, to go to bed. He sometimes Wished that he might treat this tyrant of a watch as the March Hare served the Hatter's.

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