But the other visitors who came in Kingsley’s wake and without his excuse—­how they disturbed us!  We used to be seated, my Father at his microscope, I with my map or book, in the down-stairs room we called the study.  There would be a hush around us in which you could hear a sea-anemone sigh.  Then, abruptly, would come a ring at the front door; my Father would bend at me a corrugated brow, and murmur, under his breath, ‘What’s that?’ and then, at the sound of footsteps, would bolt into the verandah, and around the garden into the potting-shed.  If it was no visitor more serious than the postman or the tax-gatherer, I used to go forth and coax the timid wanderer home.  If it was a caller, above all a female caller, it was my privilege to prevaricate, remarking innocently that ‘Papa is out!’

Into a paradise so carefully guarded, I know not how that serpent Miss Wilkes could penetrate, but there she was.  She ‘broke bread’ with the Brethren at the adjacent town, from which she carried on strategical movements, which were, up to a certain point, highly successful.  She professed herself deeply interested in microscopy, and desired that some of her young ladies should study it also.  She came attended by an unimportant man, and by pupils to whom I had sometimes, very unwillingly, to show our ‘natural objects’.  They would invade us, and all our quietness with chattering noise; I could bear none of them, and I was singularly drawn to Miss Marks by finding that she disliked them too.

By whatever arts she worked, Miss Wilkes certainly achieved a certain ascendancy.  When the knocks came at the front door, I was now instructed to see whether the visitor were not she, before my Father bolted to the potting-shed.  She was an untiring listener, and my Father had a genius for instruction.  Miss Wilkes was never weary of expressing what a revelation of the wonderful works of God in creation her acquaintance with us had been.  She would gaze through the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere until the silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of water under inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light and vanish, because the drop itself had evaporated.  ’Well, I can only say, how marvellous are Thy doings!’ was a frequent ejaculation of Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received.  She learned the Latin names of many of the species, and it seems quite pathetic to me, looking back, to realize how much trouble the poor woman took.  She ‘hung’, as the expression is, upon my Father’s every word, and one instance of this led to a certain revelation.