Despite the rigors of Hepsey in the kitchen, and the careful supervision of Temperance, there was little systematic housekeeping.  Mother had severe turns of planning, and making rules, falling upon us in whirlwinds of reform, shortly allowing the band of habit to snap back, and we resumed our former condition.  She had no assistance from father in her ideas of change.  It was enough for him to know that he had built a good house to shelter us, and to order the best that could be bought for us to eat and to wear.  He liked, when he went where there were fine shops, to buy and bring home handsome shawls, bonnets, and dresses, wholly unsuited in general to the style and taste of each of us, but much handsomer than were needful for Surrey.  They answered, however, as patterns for the plainer materials of our neighbors.  He also bought books for us, recommended by their covers, or the opinion of the bookseller.  His failing was to buy an immense quantity of everything he fancied.

“I shall never have to buy this thing again,” he would say; “let us have enough.”

Veronica and I grew up ignorant of practical or economical ways.  We never saw money, never went shopping.  Mother was indifferent in regard to much of the business of ordinary life which children are taught to understand.  Father and mother both stopped at the same point with us, but for a different reason; father, because he saw nothing beyond the material, and mother, because her spiritual insight was confused and perplexing.  But whatever a household may be, the Destinies spin the web to their will, put of the threads which drop hither and thither, floating in its atmosphere, white, black, or gray.

From the time we moved, however, we were a stirring, cheerful family, independent of each other, but spite of our desultory tastes, mutual habits were formed.  When the want of society was felt, we sought the dining-room, sure of meeting others with the same want.  This room was large and central, connecting with the halls, kitchen, and mother’s room.  It was a caravansary where people dropped in and out on their way to some other place.  Our most public moments were during meal-time.  It was known that father was at home at breakfast and supper, and could be consulted.  As he was away at our noonday dinner, generally we were the least disturbed then, and it was a lawless, irregular, and unceremonious affair.  Mother establisher her arm-chair here, and a stand for her workbasket.  Hepsey and Temperance were at hand, the men came for orders, and it was convenient for the boy to transmit the local intelligence it was his vocation to collect.  The windows commanded a view of the sea, the best in the house.  This prospect served mother for exercise.  Her eyes roved over it when she wanted a little out-of-doors life.  If she desired more variety, which was seldom, she went to the kitchen.  After we moved she grew averse to leaving the house, except to go to church.  She never quitted the