t and capitally educated
women. My relations with them, all but totally interrupted for upward of
thirty years, were renewed late in the middle of my life and toward the
end of theirs, when I visited them repeatedly at their pretty rural
dwelling near Hereford, where they enjoyed in tranquil repose the easy
independence they had earned by honorable toil. There, the lovely
garden, every flower of which looked fit to take the first prize at a
horticultural show, the incomparable white strawberries, famous
throughout the neighborhood, and a magnificent Angola cat, were the
delights of my out-of-door life; and perfect kindness and various
conversation, fed by an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, an immense
knowledge of books, and a long and interesting acquaintance with
society, made the indoor hours passed with these quiet old lady
governesses some of the most delightful I have ever known. The two
younger sisters died first; the eldest, surviving them, felt the sad
solitude of their once pleasant home at "The Laurels" intolerable, and
removed her residence to Brighton, where, till the period of her death,
I used to go and stay with her, and found her to the last one of the
most agreeable companions I have ever known.

At the time of my first acquaintance with my cousins, however, neither
their own studies nor those of their pupils so far engrossed them as to
seclude them from society. Bath was then, at certain seasons, the gayest
place of fashionable resort in England; and, little consonant as such a
thing would appear at the present day with the prevailing ideas of the
life of a teacher, balls, routs, plays, assemblies, the Pump Room, and
all the fashionable dissipations of the place, were habitually resorted
to by these very "stylish" school-mistresses, whose position at one
time, oddly enough, was that of leaders of "the ton" in the pretty
provincial capital of Somersetshire. It was, moreover, understood, as
part of the system of the establishment, that such of the pupils as were
of an age to be introduced into society could enjoy the advantage of the
chaperonage of these ladies, and several did avail themselves of it.

What profit I made under these kind and affectionate kinsfolk I know
not; little, I rather think, ostensibly; perhaps some beneath the
surface, not very manifest either to them or myself at the time; but
painstaking love sows more harvests than it wots of, wherever or
whenever (or if never) it reaps them.