Summary

"The Old Nurse's Story" begins with Hester – the nurse in the story to come – addressing an audience of children: "You know, my dears, that your mother and an orphan, and an only child" (1). She explains that, in her youth at age seventeen, she became the nursemaid to their mother, then a little girl, named Rosamond. She explains that Rosamond never left her mother's arms, and was a beautiful baby from a good family called Furnivall. Her father – the audience's grandfather – was a hardworking member of the clergy. Together they made a lovely and kind couple who adored their baby. But, when Rosamond was four or five years old, both parents died – the father of a fever from traveling, and the mother from grief over the loss of her husband. Rosamond's mother had been pregnant at the time, and the baby did not survive...