of a little village not far from us, which was her favourite resting-
place, a copy of the De Imitatione Christi was found which belonged
to her. So the talk was scattered again and its convergence
prevented. She used to say doubtful things about love. One of them
struck my mother with horror. Miss Leroy told a male person once,
and told him to his face, that if she loved him and he loved her, and
they agreed to sign one another's foreheads with a cross as a
ceremony, it would be as good to her as marriage. This may seem a
trifle, but nobody now can imagine what was thought of it at the time
it was spoken. My mother repeated it every now and then for fifty
years. It may be conjectured how easily any other girls of our
acquaintance would have been classified, and justly classified, if
they had uttered such barefaced Continental immorality. Miss Leroy's
neighbours were remarkably apt at classifying their fellow-creatures.
They had a few, a very few holes, into which they dropped their
neighbours, and they must go into one or the other. Nothing was more
distressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding all the violence
which might be used to it, would not fit into a hole, but remained an
exception. Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of his
generalisation, and having heard of this and other observations
accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to be slightly rude to her. What
she said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards of
mentioning her name, and when he did he was wont to declare that she
was "a rum un." She was not particular, I have heard, about personal
tidiness, and this I can well believe, for she was certainly not
distinguished when I knew her for this virtue. She cared nothing for
the linen-closet, the spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker,
which were the true household gods of the respectable women of those
days. She would have been instantly set down as "slut," and as
having "nasty dirty forrin ways," if a peculiar habit of hers had not