ce more, though she, poor girl, being cook to the
household apparently, could only enjoy his society when she was not
employed "in the drudgery of the scullery." A year later, when William
had returned to England again, and had just received his appointment as
organist at Halifax, his father, Isaac, had a stroke of paralysis which
ended his violin-playing for ever, and forced him to rely thenceforth
upon copying music for a precarious livelihood. In 1767 he died, and
poor Carolina saw before her in prospect nothing but a life of that
domestic drudgery which she so disliked. "I could not bear the idea of
being turned into a housemaid," she says; and she thought that if only
she could take a few lessons in music and fancy work she might get "a
place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of
French would be no objection." But, unhappily, good dame Herschel,
like many other uneducated and narrow-minded persons, had a strange
dread of too much knowledge. She thought that "nothing further was
needed," says Carolina, "than to send me two or three months to a
sempstress to be taught to make household linen; so all that my father
could do was to indulge me sometimes with a short lesson on the violin
when my mother was either in good humour or out of the way. It was her
certain belief that my brother William would have returned to his
country, and my eldest brother would not have looked so high, if they
had had a little less learning." Poor, purblind, well-meaning,
obstructive old dame Herschel! what a boon to the world that children
like yours are sometimes seized with this incomprehensible fancy for
"looking too high"!

Nevertheless, Carolina managed by rising early to take a few lessons at
daybreak from a young woman whose parents lived in the same cottage
with hers; and so she got through a little work before the regular
daily business of the family began at seven. Imagine her delight then,
just as the difficulties after her father's death are making that
housemaid's place seem almost inevitable, when she gets a letter from
William at Bath, asking her to come over to England and join him at
that gay and fashionable city. He would try to prepare her for singing
at his concerts; but if after two years' trial she didn't succeed, he
would take her back again to Hanover himself. In 1772, indeed, William
in person came over to fetch her, and thenceforth the brother and
sister worked unceasingly together