The Story of Bawn

I am Bawn Devereux.

I am Bawn Devereux, and I have lived as long as I remember at Aghadoe

Abbey with my grandfather and grandmother, the Lord and Lady St. Leger.

At one time we were a family of five. There was my Uncle Luke, and there

was my cousin Theobald.

Theobald was my boy cousin, and we played together up and down the long

corridors in winter, and in the darkness of the underground passage, in

summer in the woods and shrubberies and gardens, and we were happy

together.

I was eager to please Theobald, and I put away from me my natural

shrinkings from things he did not mind, lest he should despise me and be

dissatisfied with me, longing for a boy's company. I would do all he

did, and I must have been a famous tomboy. But my reward was that he

never seemed to desire other company than mine.

Once, indeed, I remember that when he handed me live bait to put upon

the hook I turned suddenly pale and burst into tears.

When I had done it I looked at him apprehensively, dreading to see his

contempt written in his face, but there was no such thing. There was

instead the dawn of a new feeling. My cousin's face wore such an

expression as I had never seen in it before. He was at this time a tall

boy of fifteen, and Bridget Connor, my grandmother's maid, was making me

my first long frock.

He looked at me with that strange expression, and he said, "Poor little

Bawn!"

It was the beginning of the new order of things in which I fagged for

him no more, but was spared the labours and fatigues I had endured

cheerfully during our early years. Indeed, I often wonder now at the

things I did for him, such things as the feminine nature turns from with

horror, although they seem to come naturally enough to a boy.

(Excerpt from Chapter 1)