s always dry, uninteresting stuff. Flora will
stay with us while Angus goes on to York, and then he will pick her up
again as he comes back. I wish the Bracewells might be here at the same
time. I should like Flora and Amelia to know one another, and I do not
think they do at all.

It is shocking dull here at Brocklebank. I dare say I feel it more than
my sisters, having lived in Carlisle all my life, so to speak: and as to
my Aunt Kezia, I do believe, if she had her garden, and orchard, and
kitchen, and dairy, and her work-box, and a Bible, and Prayer-book, and
The Compleat Gentlewoman, she would be satisfied to live at the North
Pole or anywhere. But I am perfectly delighted when anybody comes to
see us, if 'tis only Ephraim Hebblethwaite. He is the son of Farmer
Hebblethwaite, lower down the valley, and I believe he admires Fanny.
Fanny cannot bear him; she says he has such an ugly name. But I think
he is very pleasant, and I suppose he could change his name, though I
can't see why it signifies. Beside him, and Ambrose Catterall, and
Esther Langridge, we know no young people except our cousins. Father
being Squire of Brocklebank, we cannot mix with the common folks.

Old Mr Digby is the Vicar, and I do not think he is far short of a
hundred years old. He is an old bachelor, and has nobody to keep his
house but our Sam's mother, a Scotchwoman--old Elspie they call her. He
does not often preach of late years--except on Good Friday and Easter
Sunday, and such high days. A pleasant old man he used to be, but he
grows forgetful now, for the last time we met him, he patted my head
just as if I were still a little child, and I shall be seventeen in
March. He has been Vicar over sixty years, and christened Father and
married my grand-parents.

I do wish we had just a few more friends. It really is too bad, for we
might have known the family at Seven Stones, only two miles off, if they
had not been Whigs, and there are five sons and four daughters there.
Father would no more think of shaking hands with a Whig (if he knew it)
than he would eat roast beef on Good Friday. I should not care. Why
should one not have some fun, because old Mr Outhwaite is a Whig?

I shall have to keep my book locked up if I tell it all I think, as I
have been doing now. I would not have Hatty get hold of it for all the
world. And as to my Aunt Kezia--I believe she would whip me and send me
to bed if she read only the last page.