Or if the little party felt enterprising, there lay beyond, the park, its slopes covered with wild strawberries, and with woods where they could gather flowers unchecked.  Further, there was no going, except on alternate Sundays, when there was service in the tumble-down Church at the park gate.  It was in far worse condition than the Church at home, and was served by a poor forlorn-looking curate, who lived at Brentford, and divided his services between four parishes, each of which was content to put up with a fortnightly alternate morning and evening service.  The Belamour seat was a square one, without the comfortable appliances of the Delavie closet, and thus permitting a much fuller view, but there was nothing to be seen except a row of extremely gaudy Belamour hatchments, displaying to the full, the saltir-wise sheafs of arrows on the shields or lozenges, supported by grinning skulls.  The men’s shields preserved their eagle crest, the women had only lozenges, and the family motto, Amo et Amabo, was exchanged for the more pious “Resurgam.”

Aurelia found that the family seat, whither she was marshalled by Mrs. Aylward, was already occupied by two ladies, who rose up, and made her stately curtsies with a decidedly disgusted air, although there was ample space for her and Fidelia, the only one of her charges whom she had ventured to take with her.  They wore the black hoods, laced boddices, long rolls of towering curl and open upper skirts, of Queen Anne’s day, and in the eyes of thirty years’ later, looked so ridiculous that Fay could not but stare at them the whole time, and whenever Aurelia turned her glances from her book to see whether her little companion was behaving herself, the big blue considering eyes were always levelled full upon the two forms before her.

The ladies were in keeping with their dress, thin, stiff and angular, with worn and lined faces, highly rouged, and enormous long-handled fans, and Aurelia was almost as much astonished as the child.

There was a low curtseying again, and much ceremony before it was possible to get out of the pew, and the two ladies mounted at the door on lofty pattens which added considerably to their height, and, attended by a loutish-looking man in livery, who carried their books, stalked of into the village.

Aurelia found from the communicative Molly that they were Mistress Phoebe and Mistress Delia Treforth, kinswomen of the Belamour family, who had in consequence a life residence rent-free in a tall thin red square house near the churchyard, where a very gay parrot was always to be seen in the windows.  They no doubt regarded Miss Delavie and the little Waylands as interlopers at Bowstead, and their withering glances made Church-going a trying affair—­indeed the first time that Aurelia took little Amoret, they actually drove the sensitive child into a sobbing fit, so that she had to be carried out, begging to know why those ladies looked so cross at her.