Susan Arnold, the Doctor's fourth daughter, married Mr. John Cropper in
1858, and here, too, in her house beside the Mersey, among fields and
trees that still maintain a green though besmutted oasis in the busy
heart of Liverpool, that girdles them now on all sides, and will soon
engulf them, there were kindness and welcome for the little Tasmanians.
She died a few years ago, mourned and missed by her own people--those
lifelong neighbors who know truly what we are. Of the fifth daughter,
Frances, "Aunt Fan," I may not speak, because she is still with us in
the old house--alive to every political and intellectual interest of
these darkened days, beloved by innumerable friends in many worlds, and
making sunshine still for Arnold's grandchildren and their children's
children. But it was to her that my own stormy childhood was chiefly
confided, at Fox How; it was she who taught the Tasmanian child to read,
and grappled with her tempers; and while she is there the same magic as
of old clings about Fox How for those of us who have loved it, and all
it stands for, so long.




CHAPTER V


THE FRIENDS OF FOX HOW


It remains for me now to say something of those friends of Fox How and
my father whose influence, or whose living presence, made the atmosphere
in which the second generation of children who loved Fox How grew up.