IV. UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS 71
later, having had no care after her mistress and Jessie were gone, but when she might go to them.
78. I was at Plymouth with my father and mother when my Scottish aunt died, and had been very happy with my nurse on the hill east of the town, looking out on the bay and breakwater; and came in to find my father, for the first time I had ever seen him, in deep distress of sobbing tears.
I was very sorry that my aunt was dead, but, at that time, (and a good deal since, also,) I lived mostly in the present, like an animal, and my principal sensation was,- What a pity it was to pass such an uncomfortable evening -and we at Plymouth!
The deaths of Jessie and her mother of course ended our Scottish days. The only surviving daughter, Mary, was thenceforward adopted by my father and mother, and brought up with me. She was fourteen when she came to us, and I four years younger;-so with the Perth days, closed the first decade of my life. Mary was a rather pretty, blue-eyed, clumsily-made girl, very amiable and affectionate in a quiet way, with no parts, but good sense and good principle, honestly and inoffensively pious, and equal tempered, but with no pretty girlish ways or fancies. She became a serene additional neutral tint in the household harmony; read alternate verses of the Bible with my mother and me in the mornings, and went to a day school in the forenoon. When we travelled she took somewhat of a governess position towards me, we being allowed to explore places together without my nurse;-but we generally took old Anne too for better company.
79. It began now to be of some importance what church I went to on Sunday morning. My father, who was still much broken in health, could not go to the long Church of England service, and, my mother being evangelical, he went contentedly, or at least submissively, with her and me to Beresford Chapel, Walworth, where the Rev. E. Andrews preached, regularly, a somewhat eloquent, forcible,
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