Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/39

 wondering reply was: "Why of course; everybody and everything must try to please God, else where would be the use of living at all?"

Babies—when they are good—always seem somewhat akin to angels, and the "Rosebud"—as Mackay called his adopted girl—always had a perfect belief not only in their existence, but in their near presence. The poet especially encouraged her faith in them. The "Rosebud" always believed angels were in her bedroom at night, and on her once saying that she could not see the angel (whom she fully expected) in her room, the Doctor answered: "Never mind, dearie! It is there, you may be sure; and if you will behave just as if you saw it, you will certainly see it some day."

Passed chiefly in the country and abroad, the first ten years of Marie Corelli's life went by pleasantly enough. Some hours daily were devoted to lessons; others to play, and most of these amongst the flowers that she has always loved. And as much time was spent, not over lesson books, but over those works of a nature to be understood by a child which she found in the Doctor's library, and listening to stories, witty and wise, of Dr. Mackay's former friends and literary associates. Many, indeed, had been these friends—Dickens and Thackeray, Sir Edwin Landseer and Douglas Jerrold, to