" The inhabited rooms of the old house looked bright
and festal; there were fresh flowers in the pots, honey as well as
butter on the breakfast table. The Major and Palmer were both in full
uniform, wonderfully preserved. Eugene, a marvel of prettiness, with
his curled hair and little velvet coat, contrived by his sisters out
of some ancestral hoard. Betty wore thick silk brocade from the same
store; Harriet a fresh gay chintz over a crimson skirt, and Aurelia
was in spotless white, with a broad blue sash and blue ribbons in her
hat, for her father liked to see her still a child; so her hair was
only tied with blue, while that of her sisters was rolled over a
cushion, and slightly powdered.
The church was so near that the Major could walk thither, leaning on
his stout crutch-handled stick, and aided by his daughter's arm, as
he proceeded down the hawthorn lane, sweet with the breath of May,
exchanging greetings with whole families of the poor, the fathers in
smock frocks wrought with curious needlework on the breast and back,
the mothers in high-crowned hats and stout dark blue woollen gowns,
the children, either patched or ragged, and generally barefooted, but
by no means ill-fed.
No Sunday school had been invented. The dame who hobbled along in
spectacles, dropping a low curtsey to the "quality," taught the
hornbook and the primer to a select few of the progeny of the farmers
and artisans, and the young ladies would no more have thought of
assisting her labours than the blacksmith's.
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