The little girl whose head I adorned was the daughter of a poor
vicar who lived with his wife in an obscure country town in England.

Alice was their fifth child, but their only daughter. She was very
beautiful, and, I may say it surely without vanity now, I was her
greatest ornament. I was of a beautiful auburn color, and fell in
thick clusters all over her happy, gentle head, and shaded her
laughter-loving face. After a day of hard work, how fond her mother
was of taking her little pet in her lap, and twisting up every curl
in nice order under her white linen night-cap, before putting her to
bed! Her father, too, would wind my ringlets around his great
fingers, made hard and rough with toil in the garden, and would kiss
every one of them, and pray God to bless the young head on which
they grew.

As the dear head grew larger, I grew larger and thicker. Every one
who saw me noticed me. One would say, "It looks like a pot of
hyacinths"; another, "It has caught the sunshine and kept it."

What a pleasant life I led! When Alice grew a large girl, she became
something of a romp, and one of her favorite amusements was to go to
the top of a hill near her father's house, when there was a high
wind, and let it blow through her curls, and sing and shout and
dance from the fulness of her joy. When she came home, she would say
"Mother, the wind has been combing my hair."

O the horrid combing that I had to endure every morning! One must be
a head of curly hair to know how terrible is a comb.

If you will not think me too long, I must talk a little more about