year I remember, we had to read Sturm's
Reflections, translated from a German book
Mrs. Medlicott recommended. Mr. Sturm
told us what to think about for every day in
the year; and very dull it was. But I
believe Queen Charlotte had liked the book
very much, and the thought of her royal
approbation kept my lady awake during the
reading. Mrs. Chapone's Letters, and Dr.
Gregory's Advice to Young Ladies,
composed the rest of our library for week-day
reading. I, for one, was glad to leave my
fine sewing, and even my reading aloud,
(though this last did keep me with my dear
lady), to go to the still-room and potter
about among the preserves and the medicated
waters. There was no doctor for many miles
round, and with Mrs. Medlicott to direct us,
and Dr. Buchan to go by for receipts, we sent
out many a bottle of physic, which, I dare
say, was as good as what comes out of the
druggist's shop. At any rate, I do not think
we did much harm; for if any of our physics
tasted stronger than usual, Mrs. Medlicott
would bid us let it down with cochineal and
water, to make all safe, as she said. So our
bottles of medicine had very little real physic in
them at last; but we were careful in putting
labels on them, which looked very mysterious
to those who could not read, and helped the
medicine to do its work. I have sent off
many a bottle of salt and water coloured red;
and whenever we had nothing else to do in
the still-room, Mrs. Medlicott would set us
to making bread-pills by way of practice, and,
as far as I can say, they were very efficacious,
as before we gave out a box Mrs. Medlicott
always told the patient what symptoms to
expect; and I hardly ever inquired without
hearing that they had produced their effect.
There was one old man, who took six pills
a-night, of any kind we liked to give him, to
make him sleep; and if, by any chance, his
daughter had forgotten to let us know that
he was out of his medicine, he was so restless
and miserable that, as he said, he thought
he was like to die. I think ours was what
would be called homoeopathic practice now-
a-days. Then we learnt to make all the
cakes and dishes of the season in the still-
room. We had plum-porridge and mince-
pies at Christmas, fritters and pancakes on
Shrove Tuesday, furmenty on Mothering
Sunday, violet cakes in Passion Week, tansy
pudding on Easter Sunday, three-cornered
cakes on Trinity Sunday, and so on through
the year; all made from good old Church
receipts, handed down from one of my lady's
earliest Protestant ancestors. Every one of
us passed a portion of the day with Lady
Ludlow; and now and then we rode out
with her in her coach and four. She did not
like to go out with a pair of horses,
considering this rather beneath her rank;
and, indeed, four horses were very often
needed to pull her heavy coach through the
stiff mud. But it was rather a cumbersome
equipage through the narrow Warwickshire
lanes; and I used often to think it was well
that countesses were not plentiful, or else
we might have met another lady of quality
in another coach and four where there would
have been no possibility of turning, or passing
each other, and very little chance of backing.
Once when the idea of this danger of meeting
another countess in a narrow deep-rutted
lane was very prominent in my mind, I
ventured to ask Mrs. Medlicott what would
have to be done on such an occasion; and
she told me that the latest creation must
back, for sure, which puzzled me a good
deal at the time, although I understand it
now. I began to find out the use of the
Peerage, a book which had seemed to me
rather dull before; but, as I was always a
coward in a coach, I made myself well
acquainted with the dates of creation of our
three Warwickshire earls, and was happy to
find that Earl Ludlow ranked second, the
oldest earl being a hunting widower, and not
likely to drive out in a carriage.

All this time I have wandered from Mr,
Gray. Of course, we first saw him in church
when he read himself in. He was very red-
faced, the kind of redness which goes with
light hair, and a blushing complexion; he
looked slight and short, and his bright light
frizzy hair had hardly a dash of powder in it.
I remember my lady making this observation,
and sighing over it; for, though since
the famine in seventeen hundred and ninety-
nine and eighteen hundred, there had been a
tax on hair-powder, yet it was reckoned very
revolutionary and Jacobin not to wear a good
deal of it. My lady hardly liked the opinions
of any man who wore his own hair; but this
she would say was rather a prejudice; only
in youth none but the mob went wigless, and
she could not get over the association of wigs
with birth and breeding; a man's own hair
with that class of people who had formed the
rioters in seventeen hundred and eighty,
when Lord George Gordon had been one
of the bugbears of my lady's life. Her
husband and his brothers, she told us, had
been put into breeches, and had their heads
shaved on their seventh birthday, each of
them; a handsome little wig of the newest
fashion forming the old Lady Ludlow's
invariable birthday present to her sons as they
each arrived at that age; and afterwards, to
the day of their death, they never saw their
own hair. To be without powder, as some
underbred people were talking of being now,
was in fact to insult the proprieties of life,
by being undressed. It was English sans-
culottism. But Mr. Gray did wear a little
powder, enough to save him in my lady's
good opinion; but not enough to make her
approve of him decidedly.

The next time I saw him was in the great
hall. Mary Mason and I were going to drive
out with my lady in her coach, and when
we went downstairs with our best hats and