she could bear neither the exposure nor fatigue I did; hence the reason
wherefore I was so much alone. From this cause, too, she was never
submitted to the same discipline that I was; she was never made so
familiar with the stocks and iron collar, nor the heavy tasks; for
after my brother was gone to school I still was carried on in my Latin
studies, and even before I was twelve I was obliged to translate fifty
lines of Virgil every morning, standing in these same stocks, with the
iron collar pressing on my throat."

When Mary was between twelve and thirteen a great change came in her
life. Her father was presented to the vicarage of Kidderminster in
Staffordshire, where the carpets are made. It was then a very rich
living. It was settled that they should go to Kidderminster to live,
while a curate was to do duty at Stanford and occupy the rectory. In
those days clergymen often held two or even three livings at once in
different parts of the country, taking the stipends themselves, and
putting a curate in charge of whichever parishes they did not choose to
reside in.

Mary was pleased at the idea of a change, as children generally are;
and so was her father, who loved society and the noise and bustle of a
town. But to poor Mrs. Butt, who was a very shy, timid, retiring
person, the idea of exchanging "the glorious groves of Stanford for a
residence in a town, where nothing is seen but dusty houses and dyed
worsted hanging to dry on huge frames in every open space," was
terrible. Mary could well remember how, during that summer, her mother
walked in the woods, crying bitterly and fretting over the coming
change till her health suffered.

Life in the big manufacturing town was much less wild and free than it
had been in the Worcestershire parsonage; but the two little girls
managed to be very happy in their own way. For one thing, they had a
bedroom looking into the street, and a street was a new thing to them,
and they spent every idle moment in staring out of the windows. They
had a cupboard in which they kept their treasures--a dolls' house which
they had brought from Stanford, and all the books they had hoarded up
from childhood; "these, with two white cats, which we had also brought
from Stanford, happily afforded us much amusement." Mary's rage for
dolls was, moreover, at its height, though she more than ever took
pains to hide her darlings, under her pinafore, from the eyes of
Kidderminster.

Most of all, how