Her education in youth was not much attended to; and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments.  She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.  Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion.  I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids.

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but in the teazing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of participation.  If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction.  She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit; but best, when she goes a journey with you.

We made an excursion together a few summers since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that fine corn country.

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house,—­delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead.  I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years.  I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division.  But that is impossible.  The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my grandmother’s sister.  His name was Gladman.  My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field.  The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields are almost extinct.  More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches also.  Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End—­kindred or strange folk—­we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore.

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Alban’s, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon.  The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year.  For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to that, which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!