face sank. It was a great disappointment,
for it was an all but inviolable rule with her
never to engage a servant who could write.
But I have known her ladyship break through
it, although in both cases in which she did so
she put the girl's principles to a further and
unusual test in asking her to repeat the ten
commandments. One pert young woman—
and yet I was sorry for her too, only she
afterwards married a rich draper in Shrewsbury
who—had got through her trials pretty
tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt
all, by saying glibly, at the end of the last
commandment, "An't please your ladyship, I
can cast accounts."

"Go away, wench," said my lady in a hurry,
"You're only fit for trade; you will not suit
me for a servant." The girl went away
crestfallen; in a minute, however, my lady sent
me after her to see that she had something to
eat before leaving the house; and, indeed,
she sent for her once again, but it was only
to give her a Bible, and to bid her beware
of French principles, which had led the
French to cut off their kings' and queens'
heads.

The poor, blubbering girl said, "Indeed,
my lady, I wouldn't hurt a fly, much less a
king, and I cannot abide the French, nor
frogs neither, for that matter."

But my lady was inexorable, and took a
girl who could neither read nor write, to
make up for her alarm about the progress of
education towards addition and subtraction;
and, afterwards, when the clergyman who
was at Hanbury parish when I came there,
had died, and the bishop had appointed
another, and a younger man, in his stead,
this was one of the points on which he and
my lady did not agree. While good old deaf
Mr. Mountford lived, it was my lady's custom,
when indisposed for a sermon, to stand up at
the door of her large square pew,—just opposite
to the reading-desk,—and to say (at that
part of the morning service where it is decreed
that in quires and places where they sing
here followeth the Anthem):—"Mr. Mountford,
I will not trouble you for a discourse
this morning." And we all knelt down to
the Litany with great satisfaction; for Mr.
Mountford, though he could not hear, had
always his eyes open about this part of the
service, for any of my lady's movements.
But the new clergyman, Mr. Gray, was of a
different stamp. He was very zealous in all
his parish work, and my lady, who was just
as good as she could be to the poor, was often
crying him up as a godsend to the parish,
and he never could send amiss to the Court
when he wanted broth, or wine, or jelly, or
sago for a sick person. But he needs must
take up the new hobby of education; and I
could see that this put my lady sadly about
one Sunday, when she suspected, I know not
how, that there was something to be said in
his sermon about a Sunday school which he
was planning. She stood up, as she had not
done since Mr. Mountford's death, two years
and better before this time, and said,—

"Mr. Gray, I will not trouble you for a
discourse this morning."

But her voice was not well-assured and
steady; and we knelt down with more of
curiosity than satisfaction in our minds. Mr.
Gray preached a very rousing sermon, on the
necessity of establishing a Sabbath School in
the village. My lady shut her eyes, and
seemed to go to sleep; but I don't believe
she lost a word of it, though she said nothing
about it that I heard until the next Saturday,
when two of us, as was the custom, were
riding out with her in her carriage; and we
went to see a poor bed-ridden woman, who
lived some miles away at the other end of the
estate, and of the parish; and as we came out
of the cottage we met Mr. Gray walking up
to it, in a great heat, and looking very tired.
My lady beckoned him to her, and told him
she should wait and take him home with her,
adding that she wondered to see him there,
so far from his home, for that it was beyond
a Sabbath-day's journey, and, from what she
had gathered from his sermon the last Sunday,
he was all for Judaism against Christianity.
He looked as if he did not understand
what she meant; but the truth was that,
besides the way in which he had spoken up
for schools and schooling, he had kept calling
Sunday the Sabbath; and, as her ladyship
said, "the Sabbath is the Sabbath, and that's
one thing—it is Saturday; and if I keep it,
I'm a Jew, which I'm not. And Sunday is
Sunday; and that's another thing; and if I
keep it, I'm a Christian, which I humbly
trust I am."

But when Mr. Gray got an inkling of her
meaning in talking about a Sabbath-day's
journey, he only took notice of a part of it;
he smiled and bowed, and said no one knew
better than her ladyship what were the
duties that abrogated all inferior laws regarding
the Sabbath; and that he must go in and
read to old Betty Brown, so that he would
not detain her ladyship.

"But I shall wait for you, Mr. Gray,"
said she. "Or I will take a drive round by
Oakfield, and be back in an hour's time."
For, you see, she would not have him feel
hurried or troubled with a thought that he
was keeping her waiting, while he ought to
be comforting and praying with old Betty.

"A very pretty young man, my dears,"
said she, as we drove away. "But I shall
have my pew glazed all the same."

We did not know what she meant at the
time; but the next Sunday but one we did.
She had the curtains all round the grand
old Hanbury family seat, taken down, and,
instead of them, there was glass up to the
height of six or seven feet. We entered by
a door, with a window in it that drew up or
down just like what you see in carriages.
This window was generally down, and then
we could hear perfectly; but if Mr. Gray