back before breakfast.
[Inquiries about friends follow, and then:] Question upon question;
but no matter, answer another, who sent me the violets? though I
think my guess is right. If it was Mr. Ashworth it was very kind,
for I think they were the first he had found this spring. Take care
what you put in your letters to grandpapa. The last but one was
pronounced by a judge whose opinion I am sure you will agree with,
because you will think it right, to be very dignified and a perfect
specimen of epistolography. There were cries of "It won't do" all
through the letter. Do you think you shall come here soon? I begin
to want to see some of you.

Bessie, as usual, had charge of one of the little girls. She writes: "I
think Katie is improved since we have been here, but I cannot get her to
get up; so please ask mamma to say what time she is to get up, for now
it is not much before eight and often some time after."

Now to an elder sister who wants to do her shopping at Abingdon before
breakfast, Miss Katie must have been a trial. But Bessie herself was by
no means perfect in this respect. Some years later she and a sister
about her own age paid a visit to an old lady, cousin of their father's,
in Yorkshire. This cousin rose early, was very punctual, and expected
her guests to be the same; but, "Say what I would," writes her sister,
"I could not get Bessie up in the morning, not even though I represented
that it made me appear to disregard Miss Dawson's wishes as well as
herself, and was not fair. The only answer I could get was, 'I say
nothing;' and the next morning she was as late as ever." Whether Mrs.
Gilbert was in this case also appealed to "to fix the hour" we are not
told.

In the autumn Bessie is at home again, and, writing to her faithful
Mary, she says: "The week after next our house must stretch a slight
degree. There will be the Halls, the Churtons, the Woods from Broadwater
(it was Mrs. Wood who fought for the teaching of reading in St. George's
Schools thirteen years previously), the two Archdeacons, Mr. Garbett,
Mr. Simpson, and another gentleman, all in the house; and Mr. Wagner, if
he comes, will have a room at the inn. This will be something
like--won't it? I think mamma liked her visit to----."

The Bishop, his wife, and one daughter, had been paying short visits to
influential people in the county. The young lady sends home letters
which show close a