h any grown-up person.

CHAPTER IV

About a year after Mrs. Bronte's death, an elder sister, as I have before
mentioned, came from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law's
household, and look after his children. Miss Branwell was, I believe, a
kindly and conscientious woman, with a good deal of character, but with
the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who had spent nearly all her
life in the same place. She had strong prejudices, and soon took a
distaste to Yorkshire. From Penzance, where plants which we in the north
call greenhouse flowers grow in great profusion, and without any shelter
even in the winter, and where the soft warm climate allows the
inhabitants, if so disposed, to live pretty constantly in the open air,
it was a great change for a lady considerably past forty to come and take
up her abode in a place where neither flowers nor vegetables would
flourish, and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted
for far and wide; where the snow lay long and late on the moors,
stretching bleakly and barely far up from the dwelling which was
henceforward to be her home; and where often, on autumnal or winter
nights, the four winds of heaven seemed to meet and rage together,
tearing round the house as if they were wild beasts striving to find an
entrance. She missed the small round of cheerful, social visiting
perpetually going on in a country town; she missed the friends she had
known from her childhood, some of whom had been her parents' friends
before they were hers; she disliked many of the customs of the place, and
particularly dreaded the cold damp arising from the flag floors in the
passages and parlours of Haworth Parsonage. The stairs, too, I believe,
are made of stone; and no wonder, when stone quarries are near, and trees
are far to seek. I have heard that Miss Branwell always went about the
house in pattens, clicking up and down the stairs, from her dread of
catching cold. For the same reason, in the latter years of her life, she
passed nearly all her time, and took most of her meals, in her bedroom.
The children respected her, and had that sort of affection for her which
is generated by esteem; but I do not think they ever freely loved her. It
was a severe trial for any one at her time of life to change
neighbourhood and habitation so entirely as she did; and the greater her
merit.

I do not know whether Miss Branwell taught her nieces anything besides
sewing, and the