haps over-delicate in not intruding upon the privacy of others.

From their first going to Haworth, their walks were directed rather out
towards the heathery moors, sloping upwards behind the parsonage, than
towards the long descending village street. A good old woman, who came
to nurse Mrs. Bronte in the illness--an internal cancer--which grew and
gathered upon her, not many months after her arrival at Haworth, tells me
that at that time the six little creatures used to walk out, hand in
hand, towards the glorious wild moors, which in after days they loved so
passionately; the elder ones taking thoughtful care for the toddling wee
things.

They were grave and silent beyond their years; subdued, probably, by the
presence of serious illness in the house; for, at the time which my
informant speaks of, Mrs. Bronte was confined to the bedroom from which
she never came forth alive. "You would not have known there was a child
in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures.
Maria would shut herself up" (Maria, but seven!) "in the children's study
with a newspaper, and be able to tell one everything when she came out;
debates in Parliament, and I don't know what all. She was as good as a
mother to her sisters and brother. But there never were such good
children. I used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any
children I had ever seen. They were good little creatures. Emily was
the prettiest."

Mrs. Bronte was the same patient, cheerful person as we have seen her
formerly; very ill, suffering great pain, but seldom if ever complaining;
at her better times begging her nurse to raise her in bed to let her see
her clean the grate, "because she did it as it was done in Cornwall;"
devotedly fond of her husband, who warmly repaid her affection, and
suffered no one else to take the night-nursing; but, according to my
informant, the mother was not very anxious to see much of her children,
probably because the sight of them, knowing how soon they were to be left
motherless, would have agitated her too much. So the little things clung
quietly together, for their father was busy in his study and in his
parish, or with their mother, and they took their meals alone; sat
reading, or whispering low, in the "children's study," or wandered out on
the hill-side, hand in hand.

The ideas of Rousseau and Mr. Day on education had filtered down through
many classes, and spread themselves widely out. I