taught hymns, very soon after he could speak, appropriate to his tender
age, pointing out to him the inevitable fate of wicked children, and
giving him the earliest possible warning and description of the
punishment of little sinners. He repeated these poems to his stepmother
after dinner, before a great shining mahogany table, covered with grapes,
pineapples, plum-cake, port wine, and Madeira, and surrounded by stout
men in black, with baggy white neckcloths, who took the little man
between their knees, and questioned him as to his right understanding of
the place whither naughty boys were bound. They patted his head with
their fat hands if he said well, or rebuked him if he was bold, as he
often was.

Nurse Sarah or Aunt Sarah would have died had she remained many years in
that stifling garden of Eden. She could not bear to part from the child
whom her mistress and kinswoman had confided to her (the women had worked
in the same room at Newcome's, and loved each other always, when Susan
became a merchant's lady, and Sarah her servant). She was nobody in the
pompous new household but Master Tommy's nurse. The honest soul never
mentioned her relationship to the boy's mother, nor indeed did Mr.
Newcome acquaint his new family with that circumstance. The housekeeper
called her an Erastian: Mrs. Newcome's own serious maid informed against
her for telling Tommy stories of Lancashire witches, and believing in the
same. The black footman (madam's maid and the butler were of course
privately united) persecuted her with his addresses, and was even
encouraged by his mistress, who thought of sending him as a missionary to
the Niger. No little love, and fidelity, and constancy did honest Sarah
show and use during the years she passed at the Hermitage, and until
Tommy went to school. Her master, with many private prayers and
entreaties, in which he passionately recalled his former wife's memory
and affection, implored his friend to stay with him; and Tommy's fondness