We have half a dozen cottages near us now; but then it seemed to us like a lodge in a vast wilderness—­three miles away from everything, shop, house, or church.  Betsey fairly sat down and cried when she heard how far away was the butcher, and it really seemed as if we were to have the inconveniences of colonisation without the honour of it.  However, contrivances made us merry; we made our rooms pretty and pleasant, and as a pony and trap were essential to Charlie in his work, we were able to fetch and carry easily.  Moreover, we had already a fair kitchen garden laid out, and there were outhouses for pigs and poultry, so that even while draining and fencing were going on, we raised a good proportion of our own provisions, and very proud of them we were; our own mustard and cress, which we sowed in our initials, tasted doubly sweet when we reaped them as our earliest crop.

Mr. Newton had always said that some day he should drop down and see how Charles was getting on, but as he hardly ever stirred from his office in London, and only answered letters in the briefest and most business-like way, we had pretty well left off expecting him.

We had been here about six months, and had killed our first pig—­’a pretty little porker as ever was seen,’ as Betsey said.  It was hard to understand, after all the petting, admiration, and back-scratching Betsey had bestowed on him, how ready she was to sentence him, and triumph in his death; while I, feeble-minded creature, delayed rising in the morning that I might cower under the bedclothes and stop my ears against his dying squeals.  However, when he was no more, the housekeeping spirit triumphed in our independence of the butcher, while his fry and other delicacies lasted, and Betsey was supremely happy over the saltings of the legs, etc., with a view to the more distant future.

It was a cold day of early spring.  I had been down the lanes and brought in five tiny starved primroses with short stems, for which Betsey scolded me soundly, telling me that the first brood of chickens was always the same in number as the first primroses brought into the house.  I eked them out with moss in a saucer, and then, how well I remember the foolish, weary feeling that I wished something would happen to break the quiet.  We were out of the reach of new books, and the two magazines we took in would not be due for ten long days.  I did not feel sensible or energetic enough to turn to one of the standard well-bound volumes that had been Charlie’s school prizes, and at the moment I hated my needlework, both steady sewing and fancy work.  It was the same with my piano.  I had no new fashionable music, and I was in a mood to disdain what was good and classical.  So, as the twilight came on, I sat drearily by the fire, fondling the cat—­yes, this same black cat—­and thinking that my life at the ladies’ college had been a good deal livelier, and that if I had given it up for the sake of my brother’s society, I had very little of that.