design out of my mind; for I considered that the bishop was in the right
to counsel an old servant; that he could not have designed that his
advice should be reported to me; and that the same coarseness of mind
which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at all, might have coloured
it in a way more agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the
actual expressions of the worthy bishop.

I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out a very
unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I
was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to
short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day. From
the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air, acting
on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender
regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was coffee or
tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and afterwards, so
long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips,
haws, &c., or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received
in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering.
Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have
relatives in Liverpool or in London; more often I wrote love-letters to
their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants at Shrewsbury
or other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great
satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated with
hospitality; and once in particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw
(or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was
entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people with an
affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart
not yet impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and
three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and
delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding