ppy child, and when relieved from my
collar I not unseldom manifested my delight by starting from our
hall-door and taking a run for at least half a mile through the woods
which adjoined our pleasure grounds."

Marten, meanwhile, was having a much less strict and severe time of it.
Mr. Butt was an easy-going man, who liked everything about him to be
comfortable and pretty, and was not inclined to take much trouble
either with himself or others. While Mary was with her mother in her
dressing-room, working away at her books, Marten was supposed to be
learning Latin in his father's study. But as Mr. Butt had no idea of
authority, Marten made no progress whatever, and the end of it was that
good Mrs. Butt had to teach herself Latin, in order to become her boy's
tutor; and Mary was made to take it up as well, in order to incite him
to learn.

The children were great readers, though their books were few. _Robinson
Crusoe_; two sets of fairy tales; _The Little Female Academy_; and
_AEsop's Fables_ made up their whole library. _Robinson Crusoe_ was
Marten's favourite book; his wont, when a reading fit was on, was to
place himself on the bottom step of the stairs and to mount one step
every time he turned over a page. Mary, of course, copied him exactly.
Another funny custom with the pair was, on the first day of every
month, to take two sticks, with certain notches cut in them, and hide
them in a hollow tree in the woods. There was a grand mystery about
this, though Mary does not tell us in what it consisted. "No person,"
she says, "was to see us do this, and no one was to know we did it."

In the summer that Mary was eight years old, a quaint visitor came to
Stanford Rectory. This was a distant relative who had married a
Frenchman and lived at Paris through the gay and wicked period which
ushered in the French Revolution. Mary's description of this lady and
her coming to the rectory is very amusing: "Never shall I forget the
arrival of Mme. de Peleve at Stanford. She arrived in a post-chaise
with a maid, a lap-dog, a canary-bird, an organ, and boxes heaped upon
boxes till it was impossible to see the persons within. I was, of
course, at the door to watch her alight. She was a large woman,
elaborately dressed, highly rouged, carrying an umbrella, the first I
had seen. She was dark, I remember, and had most brilliant eyes. The
style of dress at that period was perhaps more preposterous and
troublesome than any which has preva