Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/213

 *ited and peculiar ideas on the rearing and educating of children. The maiden lady herself has a devoted cavalier, in the shape of an elderly Major, who proposes to her regularly, only to be met with a gentle but steady negative. The lady's heart is buried with a former lover, who, years before, went to India and died there; and although the Major knows that the object of his attachment is burning perpetual candles before a worthless shrine—for the dead man was a sad rascal in his day, and was, moreover, false to her—he prefers to let her live with her illusion rather than profit by acquainting her with the true facts of the case.

As the Major is generally in attendance on Miss Letitia Leslie we see a good deal of the bluff old soldier, for "Boy" is occasionally allowed to go and stay with "Miss Letty." These are the golden periods of the good maiden lady's life—and, too, of "Boy's," for while Miss Leslie cares for him properly, his mother exploits her ideas of motherhood by feeding the little fellow "on sloppy food which frequently did not agree with him, in dosing him with medicine when he was out of sorts, in dressing him anyhow, and in allowing him to amuse himself as he liked wherever he could, however he could, at all times, and in all places, dirty or clean."