a comfort). Hetty had described these rural economies in a long
letter to Samuel at Westminster, and been answered by an "Heroick
Poem," pleasantly facetious:

"The spacious glebe around the house
Affords full pasture to the cows,
Whence largely milky nectar flows,
O sweet and cleanly dairy!"

"Unless or Moll, or Anne, or you,
Your duty should neglect to do,
And then 'ware haunches black and blue
By pinching of a fairy."

--With much in the same easy vein about "sows and pigs and porkets,"
and the sisters' housewifely duties:

"Or lusty Anne, or feeble Moll,
Sage Pat or sober Hetty."

And the sisters were amused by the lines and committed them to heart.

They had learnt of the pleasures of life mainly through books; and
now their simple enjoyment was, as it were, more real to them because
it could be translated into verse. In circumstances, then, they were
happier than they had been for many years: nor was poverty the real
reason for Hetty's going into service at Kelstein; since Emilia had
been fetched home from Lincoln (where for five years she had been
earning her livelihood as teacher in a boarding-school) expressly to
enjoy the family's easier fortune, and with a promise of pleasant