Then, as to looks:  Mary, the eldest, had a sweet face, the more interesting from being pale; with fine dark eyes that were lighted up when she spoke.  Agnes, the younger, was ‘hardly to be called handsome, but almost;’ with an agreeable sensible countenance.  It is remarkable that women thus delineated—­not beauties, yet not plain—­are always the most fascinating to men.  The sisters doted on each other:  Mary taking the lead in society.  ‘I must even tell you,’ Horace wrote to the Countess of Ossory, ’that they dress within the bounds of fashion, but without the excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their persons.’ (One would almost have supposed that Horace had lived in the days of crinoline.’)

The first night that Horace met the two sisters, he refused to be introduced to them:  having heard so much of them that he concluded they would be ‘all pretension.’  The second night that he met them, he sat next Mary, and found her an ‘angel both inside and out.’  He did not know which he liked best; but Mary’s face, which was formed for a sentimental novel, or, still more, for genteel comedy, riveted him, he owned.  Mr. Berry, the father, was a little ‘merry man with a round face,’ whom no one would have suspected of sacrificing ’all for love, and the world well lost.’  This delightful family visited him every Sunday evening; the region of wickenham being too ‘proclamatory’ for cards to be introduced on the seventh day, conversation was tried instead; thankful, indeed, was Horace, for the ‘pearls,’ as he styled them, thus thrown in his path.  His two ‘Strawberries,’ as he christened them, were henceforth the theme of every letter.  He had set up a printing-press many years previously at Strawberry, and on taking the young ladies to see it, he remembered the gallantry of his former days, and they found these stanzas in type:—­

  ’To Mary’s lips has ancient Rome
    Her purest language taught;
  And from the modern city home
    Agnes its pencil brought.

  ’Rome’s ancient Horace sweetly chants
    Such maids with lyric fire;
  Albion’s old Horace sings nor paints,
    He only can admire.

  ’Still would his press their fame record,
    So amiable the pair is! 
  But, ah! how vain to think his word
    Can add a straw to Berry’s.’

On the following day, Mary, whom he terms the Latin nymph sent the following lines:—­

  ’Had Rome’s famed Horace thus addrest
    His Lydia or his Lyce,
  He had ne’er so oft complained their breast
    To him was cold and icy.

  ’But had they sought their joy to explain,
    Or praise their generous bard,
  Perhaps, like me, they had tried in vain,
    And felt the task too hard.’