Like most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our own devising; private codes, generally kept in cipher for our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment of our time in joint duties—­lessons, parish work, and so forth.

I think we made rather too many rules, and that we re-made them too often.  I make fewer now, and easier ones, and let them much more alone.  I wonder if I really keep them better?  But if not, may GOD, I pray Him, send me back the restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives us in early youth!  It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one’s own comfort and one’s own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser.  And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may have said of the doing.  But we speak of saints and enthusiasts for good, as if some special gifts were made to them in middle age which are withheld from other men.  Is it not rather that some few souls keep alive the lamp of zeal and high desire which GOD lights for most of us while life is young?

In spite, however, of my sister’s contentment with her lot, and the kindness and hospitality shown to her at this time by relations and friends, her position was far from comfortable; and Madam Liberality’s hospitable soul was sorely tried by having no home to which she could welcome her friends, whilst her fragile body battled against constantly moving from one house to another when she was often unfit to do anything except keep quiet and at rest.  She was not able to write much, and during 1880 only contributed two poems to Aunt Judy’s Magazine, “Grandmother’s Spring,” and “Touch Him if You Dare.”

To the following volume (1881) she again was only able to give two other poems, “Blue and Red; or the Discontented Lobster,” and “The Mill Stream”; but these are both much longer than her usual Verses for Children—­and, indeed, are better suited for older readers—­though the former was such a favourite with a three-year-old son of one of our bishops that he used to repeat it by heart.

In November 1881, Aunt Judy’s Magazine passed into the hands of a fresh publisher, and a new series was begun, with a fresh outside cover which Mr. Caldecott designed for it.  Julie was anxious to help in starting the new series, and she wrote “Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot” for the opening number.  All the scenery of this is drawn from the neighbourhood of Ecclesfield, where she had lately been spending a good deal of her time, and so refreshed her memory of its local colouring.  The story ranks equal to “Jackanapes” as a work of literary art, though it is an idyll of peace