A great event of Charlotte’s young days was the fancy-dress ball given by her parents in the spring of 1835. The Duke of Wellington himself was present; prominent still in the minds of men as the Deliverer of Europe, only twenty years earlier, from a tyrant’s thraldom. All the young Tuckers, not to speak of their parents, were ardent admirers of the Duke. Laura, still a mere child, in her enthusiasm slipped close up behind, when the Duke was ascending the stairs, and gently abstracted a fallen hair from the shoulder of the hero, which hair she preserved ever after among her choicest treasures; and Charlotte was no whit behind Laura in this devotion.