sixty, and very active. She has a bright, bird-like face, over which
flits from time to time a sad little gleam of lost beauty. Her
fingers are always busy, and the beads in her cap bob up and down
incessantly as she bends over her fancy-work. Poor old souls--poor
old children! I think my grandfather must have led them a life;
there is a peacefulness upon them that suggests deliverance. He has
been dead just five weeks.

But the old house will see quiet days enough now. I have wandered
all over it, and find it a beautiful place in itself, although it is
so stuffed with wool-work, vile china, gildings, wax flowers, and
indescribable mantel-piece atrocities, that there is not a simple or
restful corner anywhere. Yet I find myself touched by its very
hideousness, when I think that it probably looked even so, smelt
even so stale and sweet, in the days of my dear father's boyhood.
There is a picture in the large drawing-room that gives me infinite
pleasure. It is a portrait of my own grandmother with papa in a
white frock on her knees, and my poor Aunt Fanny beside her, a neat
little smiling girl in pink, with very long drawers. There is
something in the young mother's face that, at first sight, made my
father's smile rise clearly to my memory. I have since tried to
recall the vision, but in vain.

My father's half-brother, George Fletcher, a widower with a large
family, who lives four miles from here, came to see me this
afternoon, and I took a great dislike to him. (Did I hear you say
"Of course"?) But really, dearest, these introductions are very
painful; it is most unpleasant to have the undesirable stranger
thrust upon one in the guise of friend and protector, to find
oneself standing on a footing of inevitable familiarity with people