_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, and association became confusion,
Charlotte and Anne went up to London to prove their separate identity.
Emily stayed at Haworth, superbly indifferent to the proceedings. She
was unseen, undreamed of, unrealized, and in all her life she made no
sign.

But, in a spirit of reckless adventure, Charlotte and Anne walked the
seven miles to Keighley on a Friday evening in a thunderstorm, and took
the night train up. On the Saturday morning they appeared in the office
at Cornhill to the amazement of Mr. George Smith and Mr. Williams. With
childlike innocence and secrecy they hid in the Chapter Coffee-house in
Paternoster Row, and called themselves the Misses Brown. When
entertainment was offered them, they expressed a wish to hear Dr. Croly
preach. They did not hear him; they only heard _The Barber of Seville_
at Covent Garden. They tried, with a delicious solemnity, to give the
whole thing an air of business, but it was really a breathless,
infantile escapade of three days. Three days out of four years.

* * * * *

And in those four years poor Branwell's destiny found him also. After
many minor falls and penitences and relapses, he seemed at length to
have settled down. He had been tutor for two and a half years with the
Robinsons at Thorp Green, in the house where Anne was a governess. He
was happy at first; an ominous happiness. Then Anne began to be aware of
something.

Mr. Birrell has said rather unkindly that he has no use for this young
man. Nobody had any use for him. Not the editors to whom he used to
write so hysterically. Not the Leeds and Manchester Railroad Company.