osity about words, and as this was a new
one, I looked it up in our large 'English Dictionary'. But there
the definition of the term was this:--'Minx: the female of
minnock; a pert wanton.' I was as much in the dark as ever.

Whether she was the female of a minnock (whatever that may be) or
whether she was only a very well-meaning schoolmistress desirous
of enlivening a monotonous existence, Miss Wilkes certainly took
us out of ourselves a good deal. Did my Father know what danger
he ran? It was the opinion of Miss Marks and of Mary Grace that
he did not, and in the back-kitchen, a room which served those
ladies as a private oratory in the summer-time, much prayer was
offered up that his eyes might be opened ere it was too late. But
I am inclined to think that they were open all the time, that, at
all events, they were what the French call 'entr'ouvert', that
enough light for practical purposes came sifted in through his
eyelashes. At a later time, being reminded of Miss Wilkes, he
said with a certain complaisance, 'Ah, yes! she proffered much
entertainment during my widowed years!' He used to go down to her
boarding-school, the garden of which had been the scene of a
murder, and was romantically situated on the edge of a quarried
cliff; he always took me with him, and kept me at his side all
through these visits, notwithstanding Miss Wilkes' solicitude that
the fatigue and excitement would be too much for the dear child's
strength, unless I rested a little on the parlour sofa.

About this time, the question of my education came up for
discussion in the household, as indeed it well might. Miss Marks
had long proved practically inadequate in this respect, her
slender acquirements evaporating, I suppose, like the drops of
water under the microscope, while the field of her general duties
became wider. The subjects in which I took pleasure, and upon
which I possessed books, I sedulously taught myself; the other
subjects, which formed the vast majority, I did not learn at all.
Like Aurora Leigh,

I brushed with extreme flounce
The circle of the universe,

especially zoology, botany and astronomy, but with the explicit
exception of geology, which my Father regarded as tending
directly to the encouragement of infidelity. I copied a great
quantity of maps, and read all the books of travels that I could
find. But I acquired no mathematics, no languages, no history, so
that I was in danger of gross illiteracy in thes