he firm of
Dagworthy and Son. His salary was small, but the blessing of it was its
certainty; the precariousness of his existence had all but driven poor
Hood mad. There came a season of calm. Emily's sphere of work extended
itself; the school only took her mornings, and for the afternoon there
was proposed to her the teaching of the little Baxendales. The
Baxendales were well-to-do people; the father was, just then, mayor of
Dunfield, the mother was related to the member of Parliament for the
town. We have had mention of them as connections of Beatrice Redwing.

At nineteen she for the first time left home. Through the Baxendales she
obtained the position of governess in a family residing in Liverpool,
and remained with them till she went to London, to the Athels. These
three years in Liverpool were momentous for her; they led her from
girlhood to womanhood, and established her character. Her home was in
the house of a prosperous ship-owner, a Lancashire man, outwardly a
blustering good-tempered animal, yet with an inner light which showed
itself in his love of books and pictures, in his easy walking under the
burden of self-acquired riches, in a certain generous freedom which
marked his life and thoughts. His forename was Laurence: Emily, in
letters to her father, used to call him Lorenzo the Magnificent, a title
which became him well enough. In the collection of works of art he was
really great; he must have spent appalling sums annually on his picture
gallery and the minor ornaments scattered about his house. He had a
personal acquaintance, through his pecuniary dealings, with the foremost
artists of the day; he liked to proclaim the fact and describe the men.
To Emily the constant proximity of these pictures was a priceless
advantage; the years she spent among them were equivalent to a
university course. Moreover, she enjoyed, as with the Athels later, a
free command of books; here began her acquaintance with the most modern
literature, which was needful to set her thoughts in order, to throw
into right perspective her previous miscellaneous reading, and to mark
out her way in the future. Her instinctive craving for intellectual
beauty acquired a reflective consistency; she reformed her ideals, found
the loveliness of much that in her immaturity had seemed barren, put
aside, with gentle firmness, much that had appeared indispensable to her
moral life. The meanings which she attached to that word 'moral' largely
mod