ll, and the miller's brother Tommy,
were asked, and then things were carried on in a superior style. We
went into a larger room, and there was more change of partners; but as
nothing could have induced the son and heir to ask a stranger, I always
had him, whilst Miss Winnington and my sister sometimes fell to the
share of the miller and his brother, the miller being himself musical
and footing it to the tune better than his partners. The miller's
brother seemed to wheel along rather than dance, throwing himself back
and looking, in his white waistcoat which was kept for these grand
occasions, not unlike a sack of meal set upright on trucks and so
pushed about the room. I am ready to laugh to this hour when I think of
these balls, and I certainly obtained very high celebrity then and
there for being something very superior in the dancing line."

The happy life at Stanford was not destined to last long, for Mr.
Butt's health began to fail, and in the autumn of 1795 he died. Mrs.
Butt took a house at Bridgnorth, and settled there with her two
daughters. Mary had now begun to write in good earnest; and while
living at Bridgnorth two of her tales were published, one called
_Margarita_ and the other _Susan Grey_. Probably very few people now
living have ever seen or read these stories; and if we did come across
them it is to be feared we should think them very dull and long-winded.
But when new they were much admired, particularly _Susan Grey_, which
was one of the earliest tales written to interest rich and educated
people in the poor and ignorant. It was widely read and reprinted many
and many times.

In spite of the pleasure and excitement of authorship, life in the
little house in the sleepy town of Bridgnorth was very dull and cramped
to the two young girls; and they were made much happier, because they
were much busier, when the clergyman of one of the town churches asked
them to undertake the management of his Sunday school. This is what
Sunday school teaching meant at the end of the eighteenth century: "We
attended the school so diligently on the Sunday that the parents
brought the children in crowds, and we were obliged to stop short when
each of us had about thirty-five girls and the old schoolmaster as many
boys. We made bonnets and tippets for our girls; we walked with them to
church; we looked them up in the week days; we were vastly busy; we
were first amused, and next deeply interested."--"Sunday schools," she