in to the hired pew system.  They may banter me as much as they like, but I don’t like to see them jest with grandmamma about it, as if they were on equal terms, and she does not understand it either.  “My dear,” she gravely says, “your grandpapa always said it was a duty to support the parish church.”  “Nothing will do but the Congregational system in these days; don’t you think so?” began Pica dogmatically, when her father called her off.  Martyn cannot bear to see his mother teased.  He and his wife, with the young ones, made their way to Hollyford, where they found a primitive old church and a service to match, but were terribly late, and had to sit in worm-eaten pews near the door, amid scents of peppermint and southernwood.  On the way back, Martyn fraternised with a Mr. Methuen, a Cambridge tutor with a reading party, who has, I am sorry to say, arrived at the house Vis-A-Vis to ours, on the other side of the cove.  Our Oxford young ladies turn up their noses at the light blue, and say the men have not the finish of the dark; but Charley is in wild spirits.  I heard her announcing the arrival thus:  “I say, Isa, what a stunning lark!  Not but that I was up to it all the time, or else I should have skedaddled; for this place was bound to be as dull as ditchwater.”  “But how did you know?” asked Isa.  “Why, Bertie Elwood tipped me a line that he was coming down here with his coach, or else I should have told the mater I couldn’t stand it and gone to stay with some one.”  This Bertie Elwood is, it seems, one of the many London acquaintance.  He looks inoffensive, and so do the others, but I wish they had chosen some other spot for their studies, and so perhaps does their tutor, though he is now smoking very happily under a rock with Martyn.

July 7.—­Such a delightful evening walk with Metelill and Isa as Emily and I had last night, going to evensong in our despised church!  The others said they could stand no more walking and heat, and yet we met Martyn and Mary out upon the rocks when we were coming home, after being, I must confess, nearly fried to death by the gas and bad air.  They laughed at us and our exertions, all in the way of good humour, but it was not wholesome from parents.  Mary tried to make me confess that we were coming home in a self-complacent fakir state of triumph in our headaches, much inferior to her humble revelling in cool sea, sky, and moonlight.  It was like the difference between the benedicite and the Te DEUM, I could not help thinking; while Emily said a few words to Martyn as to how mamma would be disappointed at his absenting himself from Church, and was answered, “Ah!  Emily, you are still the good home child of the primitive era,” which she did not understand; but I faced about and asked if it were not what we all should be.  He answered rather sadly, “If we could’; and his wife shrugged her shoulders.  Alas!  I fear the nineteenth century tone has penetrated them, and do not wonder that this poor Isabel does not seem happy in her home.