thinking and talking, into which I found myself occasionally falling. Add
to which, there was the prospect of benefit from the more bracing air of
the north.

It was then settled that my departure from Hanbury, my happy home for so
long, was to take place before many weeks had passed. And as, when one
period of life is about to be shut up for ever, we are sure to look back
upon it with fond regret, so I, happy enough in my future prospects,
could not avoid recurring to all the days of my life in the Hall, from
the time when I came to it, a shy awkward girl, scarcely past childhood,
to now, when a grown woman,--past childhood--almost, from the very
character of my illness, past youth,--I was looking forward to leaving my
lady's house (as a residence) for ever. As it has turned out, I never
saw either her or it again. Like a piece of sea-wreck, I have drifted
away from those days: quiet, happy, eventless days,--very happy to
remember!

I thought of good, jovial Mr. Mountford,--and his regrets that he might
not keep a pack, "a very small pack," of harriers, and his merry ways,
and his love of good eating; of the first coming of Mr. Gray, and my
lady's attempt to quench his sermons, when they tended to enforce any
duty connected with education. And now we had an absolute school-house
in the village; and since Miss Bessy's drinking tea at the Hall, my lady
had been twice inside it, to give directions about some fine yarn she was
having spun for table-napery. And her ladyship had so outgrown her old
custom of dispensing with sermon or discourse, that even during the
temporary preaching of Mr. Crosse, she had never had recourse to it,
though I believe she would have had all the congregation on her side if
she had.

And Mr. Horner was dead, and Captain James reigned in his stead. Good,
steady, severe, silent Mr. Horner! with his clock-like regularity, and
his snuff-coloured clothes, and silver buckles! I have often wondered
which one misses most when they are dead and gone,--the bright creatures
full of life, who are hither and thither and everywhere, so that no one
can reckon upon their coming and going, with whom stillness and the long
quiet of the grave, seems utterly irreconcilable, so full are they of
vivid motion and passion,--or the slow, serious people, whose
movements--nay, whose very words, seem to go by clockwork; who never
appear much to affect the course of our life while they are with us, but
whose me