‘As we grew older she would help us with our charades and games, planning wonderful card games herself, and ornamenting them with brush and stencil. It was she who introduced us to Shakespeare, making me love him as no one else ever could, and making us read him in parts.... On Sunday afternoons she would take us up to her room, in order that my Mother might rest in peace from the children; and there we always spent a delightful time, looking over her dressing-case with its treasures, and listening to the histories of each trinket and curiosity, or messing with her paints. I do not remember that we ever felt ourselves to be in the way in that happy room. It was during this time that she wrote _The Haunted House_, which thrilled me with so much horror, that it was not until years after that I learnt there was a spiritual meaning underlying the tale.