'Then the strawberry leaves, dying, with a
most excellent cordial smell.' Now the
Hanburys can always smell this excellent
cordial odour, and very delicious and
refreshing it is. You see, in Lord Bacon's
time, there had not been so many intermarriages
between the court and the city as
there have been since the needy days of his
Majesty Charles the Second; and altogether
in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the great, old
families of England were a distinct race,
just as a cart-horse is one creature, and very
useful in its place, and Childers or Eclipse is
another creature, though both are of the
same species. So the old families have gifts
and powers of a different and higher class to
what the other orders have. My dear,
remember that you try if you can smell the
scent of dying strawberry leaves in this
next autumn. You have some of Ursula
Hanbury's blood in you, and that gives you
a chance."

But when October came, I sniffed and
sniffed, and all to no purpose; and my lady
—who had watched the little experiment
rather anxiously—had to give me up as a
hybrid. I was mortified, I confess, and
thought that it was in some ostentation of
her own powers that she ordered the
gardener to plant a border of strawberries on
that side the terrace that lay under her
windows.

I have wandered away from time and
place. I tell you all the remembrances I
have of those years just as they come up, and
I hope that in my old age I am not getting
too like a certain Mrs. Nickleby, whose
speeches were once read out loud to me.

I came by degrees to be all day long in
this room which I have been describing;
sometimes sitting in the easy chair, doing
some little piece of dainty work for my lady,
or sometimes arranging flowers, or sorting
letters according to their handwriting, so that
she could arrange them afterwards, and destroy
or keep as she planned, looking ever onward
to her death. Then, after the sofa was
brought in, she would watch my face, and if
she saw my colour change, she would bid me
lie down and rest. And I used to try to walk
upon the terrace every day for a short time;
it hurt me very much, it is true, but the
doctor had ordered it, and I knew her
ladyship wished me to obey.

Before I had seen the back-ground of a
great lady's life, I had thought it all play
and fine doings. But whatever other grand
people are, my lady was never idle. For
one thing, she had to superintend the agent
for the large Hanbury estate. I believe
it was mortgaged for a sum of money which
had gone to improve the late lord's Scotch
lands; but she was anxious to pay off this
before her death, and so to leave her own
inheritance free of incumbrance to her son,
the present Earl; whom, I secretly think, she
considered a greater person, as being the heir
of the Hanburys (though through a female
line), than as being my Lord Ludlow, with
half-a-dozen other minor titles.

With this wish of releasing her property
from the mortgage, skilful care was much,
needed in the management of it: and as far
as my lady could go, she took every pains.
She had a great book, in which every page
was ruled into three divisions; on the first
column was written the date and the name of
the tenant who addressed any letter on
business to her; on the second was briefly stated
the subject of the letter, which generally
contained a request of some kind. This request
would be surrounded and enveloped in so
many words, and often inserted in so many
odd reasons and excuses, that Mr. Horner (the
steward) would sometimes say it was like hunting
through a bushel of chaff to find a grain
of wheat. Now, in the second column of this
book, the grain of meaning was placed, clean
and dry, before her ladyship every morning.
She sometimes would ask to see the original
letter; sometimes she simply answered the
request by a "Yes," or a "No;" and often she
would send for leases and papers, and examine
them well, with Mr. Horner at her elbow, to
see if such petitions, as to be allowed to
plough up pasture fields, &c., were provided
for in the terms of the original agreement.
On every Thursday she made herself at
liberty to see her tenants, from four to six in
the afternoon. Mornings would have suited
my lady better, as far as convenience went,
and I believe the old custom had been to
have these levies (as her ladyship used to
call them) held before twelve. But, as she
said to Mr. Horner, when he urged returning
to the former hours, it spoilt a whole day for
a farmer, if he had to dress himself in his
best and leave his work in the forenoon
(and my lady liked to see her tenants come
in their Sunday-clothes; she would not say
a word, may-be, but she would take her
spectacles slowly out, and put them on with
silent gravity, and look at a dirty or raggedly-
dressed man so solemnly and earnestly, that
his nerves must have been pretty strong if
he did not wince, and resolve that, however
poor he might be, soap and water, and needle
and thread should be used before he again
appeared in her ladyship's ante-room). The
outlying tenants had always a supper
provided for them in the servants'-hall on
Thursdays, to which indeed all comers were
welcome to sit down. For my lady said,
though there were not many hours left of a
working-man's day when their business with
her was ended, yet that they needed food and
rest, and that she should be ashamed if they
sought either at the Fighting Lion (called at
this day the Hanbury Arms). They had as
much beer as they could drink while they were
eating; and when the food was cleared away
they had a cup a-piece of good ale, in which
the oldest tenant present, standing up, gave
Madam's health; and after that was drunk,