VII. PAPA AND MAMMA 131

only female servants,* used only tallow candles in plated candlesticks, were content with the leasehold territory of their front and back gardens,-scarce an acre altogether,- and kept neither horse nor carriage. Our shop-keeping neighbours, on the contrary, had usually great cortège of footmen and glitter of plate, extensive pleasure grounds, costly hot-houses, and carriages driven by coachmen in wigs. It may be perhaps doubted by some of my readers whether the coldness of acquaintanceship was altogether on our side; but assuredly my father was too proud to join entertainments for which he could give no like return, and my mother did not care to leave her card on foot at the doors of ladies who dashed up to hers in their barouche.

151. Protected by these monastic severities and aristocratic dignities from the snares and disturbances of the outer world, the routine of my childish days became fixed, as of the sunrise and sunset to a nestling. It may seem singular to many of my readers that I remember with most pleasure the time when it was most regular and most solitary. The entrance of my cousin Mary into our household was coincident with the introduction of masters above described,¹ and with other changes in the aims and employments of the day, which, while they often increased its interest, disturbed its tranquillity. The ideas of success at school or college, put before me by my masters, were ignoble and comfortless, in comparison with my mother’s regretful blame, or simple praise: and Mary, though of a mildly cheerful and entirely amiable disposition, necessarily touched the household heart with the sadness of her orphanage, and something interrupted its harmony by the difference, which my mother could not help showing, between the feelings with which she regarded her niece and her child.

* Thomas left us, I think partly in shame for my permanently injured lip;² and we never had another indoor man-servant.

¹ [See above, pp. 74, 76.]

² [See above, pp. 67-68.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]