He immediately resigned his position in the university, and—­as he did not wish to commit himself hastily to a fixed abode in any particular neighborhood by the purchase of an estate—­he leased the whole ready-made establishment at Brudenell Hall, all furnished and officered as it was.  There he conveyed his wife and ten children—­that is, five girls and five boys, ranging from the age of one year up to fifteen years of age.  Added to these was the motherless daughter of his deceased sister, Beatrice Merlin, who had been the wife of the chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the State.

Claudia Merlin had been confided to the care of her uncle and aunt in preference to being sent to a boarding school during her father’s absence on official duty at the capital.

Mr. and Mrs. Middleton had found, on coming to Brudenell Hall, that there was no proper school in the neighborhood to which they could send their sons and daughters.  They had besides a strong prejudice in favor of educating their children under their own eyes.  Mr. Middleton, in his capacity of professor, had seen too much of the temptations of college life to be willing to trust his boys too early to its dangers.  And as for sending the girls away from home, Mrs. Middleton would not hear of it for an instant.

After grappling with the difficulty for a while, they conquered it by concluding to engage a graduate of the university as tutor, to ground young people in what are called the fundamental parts of an English education, together with the classics and mathematics; and also to employ an accomplished lady to instruct them in music and drawing.  This school was always under the immediate supervision of the master and mistress of the house.  One or the other was almost always present in the schoolroom.  And even if this had not been so, the strictest propriety must have been preserved; for the governess was a discreet woman, nearly fifty years of age; and the tutor, though but twenty-five, was the gravest of all grave young men.

The classroom was arranged in a spare back parlor on the first floor—­a spacious apartment whose windows looked out upon the near shrubberies and the distant woods.  Here on the right hand were seated the five boys under their tutor; and on the left were gathered the girls under their governess.  But when a class was called up for recitation, before the tutor, boys and girls engaged in the same studies, and in the same stage of progress stood up together, that their minds might be stimulated by mutual emulation.

Often Mrs. Middleton occupied a seat in an arm-chair near one of the pleasant windows overlooking the shrubberies, and employed herself with some fine needlework while superintending the school.  Sometimes, also, Mr. Middleton came in with his book or paper, and occasionally, from force of habit, he would take a classbook and hear a recitation.  It was to keep his hand in, he said, lest some unexpected turn of the wheel of fortune should send him back to his old profession again.