Lady Musgrave was a particularly lady-like woman, the marked elegance of whose breeding might, with advantage, have given the tone to many a London drawing-room.  I have seen her surrounded by country neighbours, and though she was velut inter ignes luna minores, I never saw the country squire’s or country parson’s wife, who was not perfectly happy and at ease in her drawing-room, while unconsciously all the time taking a lesson in good breeding and lady-like manners.  She was thoroughly a help-meet for her husband in all his care for his people.  I believe that both he and she were convinced at the bottom of their hearts that Cumberland and Westmoreland constituted the choicest, best, and most highly civilised part of England.  And she was one of those of whom I was thinking, when in a former chapter I spoke of highly educated people whom I had known to affect provincialism of speech.  Lady Musgrave always, or perhaps it would be more correct to say generally, called a cow a “coo,” and though I suspect she would have left Westmoreland behind if evil fate had called her to London, on her own hill-sides she preferred the accents of the native speech.

Sir George had, or affected to have, considerable respect for all the little local superstitions and beliefs which are so prevalent in that “north countree.”  And the kindness with which he welcomed us as neighbours, when we built a house and came to live there, was shown despite a strong feeling which he had, or affected to have, with regard to an incident which fatally marked our debut in that country.

We bought a field in a very beautiful situation overlooking the ruins of Brougham Castle and the confluence of the Eden with the Lowther, and proceeded to build a house on the higher part of it.  But there was a considerable drop from the lower limit of our ground to the road which skirted the property, and furnished the only access to it.  There was some difficulty, therefore, in contriving a tolerable entrance from the road for wheel traffic, and it was found necessary to cause a tiny little spring that rose in the bank by the roadside to change its course in some small degree.  The affair seemed to us a matter of infinitesimal importance, but Sir George was dismayed.  We had moved, he said, a holy well, and the consequence would surely be that we should never succeed in establishing ourselves in that spot.

And surely enough we never did so succeed; for, after having built a very nice little house, and lived in it one winter and half a summer, we—­for I cannot say that it was my mother more than I, or I more than my mother—­made up our minds that “the sun yoked his horses too far from Penrith town,” and that we had had enough of it.  Sir George, of course, when he heard our determination, while he expressed all possible regret at losing us as neighbours, said that he knew perfectly well that it must be so, from the time that we so recklessly meddled with the holy well.