eful as to the result; but almost as if as a
memorial to my lord, she had allowed a kind of rough school-house to be
built on the green, just by the church; and had gently used the power she
undoubtedly had, in expressing her strong wish that the boys might only
be taught to read and write, and the first four rules of arithmetic;
while the girls were only to learn to read, and to add up in their heads,
and the rest of the time to work at mending their own clothes, knitting
stockings and spinning. My lady presented the school with more spinning-
wheels than there were girls, and requested that there might be a rule
that they should have spun so many hanks of flax, and knitted so many
pairs of stockings, before they ever were taught to read at all. After
all, it was but making the best of a bad job with my poor lady--but life
was not what it had been to her. I remember well the day that Mr. Gray
pulled some delicately fine yarn (and I was a good judge of those things)
out of his pocket, and laid it and a capital pair of knitted stockings
before my lady, as the first-fruits, so to say, of his school. I
recollect seeing her put on her spectacles, and carefully examine both
productions. Then she passed them to me.

"This is well, Mr. Gray. I am much pleased. You are fortunate in your
schoolmistress. She has had both proper knowledge of womanly things and
much patience. Who is she? One out of our village?"

"My lady," said Mr. Gray, stammering and colouring in his old fashion,
"Miss Bessy is so very kind as to teach all those sorts of things--Miss
Bessy, and Miss Galindo, sometimes."

My lady looked at him over her spectacles: but she only repeated the
words "Miss Bessy," and paused, as if trying to remember who such a
person could be; and he, if he had then intended to say more, was quelled
by her manner, and dropped the subject. He went on to say, that he had
thought it is duty to decline the subscription to his school offered by
Mr. Brooke, because he was a Dissenter; that he (Mr. Gray) feared that
Captain James, through whom Mr. Brooke's offer of money had been made,
was offended at his refusing to accept it from a man who held heterodox
opinions; nay, whom Mr. Gray suspected of being infected by Dodwell's
heresy.

"I think there must be some mistake," said my lady, "or I have
misunderstood you. Captain James would never be sufficiently with a
schismatic to be employed by that man Brooke in distributing his