THE MANSE AND ITS INMATES. 13$ 



trivial. All the week she read nothing, and he read nothing hut the 

 newspaper, but he read it to her ; and always the same paper, for 

 Mr. John Watson did not love change; and the man from whom it 

 was hired for a certain period every week-day, knew that he must 

 always send the same, and punctually to the time agreed upon, well 

 aware that it would be scrupulously returned with the same exactness. 



On Sundays they read nothing at all ; but they attended the parish 

 church, whatever the weather might be, dined at one o'clock, and were 

 sure to have a pudding. When the weather was fine, they walked, till 

 they were ready to drop with fatigue, on crowded roads, where they 

 were half choaked with dust, for the sake of air and exercise. Some- 

 times, by way of treat, drinking tea at Chelsea or Greenwich. Their 

 parents had enjoyed themselves in the same manner, and had been 

 very respectable people ! Mr. and Mrs. Watson had no idea of seek- 

 ing their happiness or sustaining their respectability by any modern 

 inyentions in the disposal of their hebdomadal holiday. 



On wet Sundays they sat in the show-room window, looking at the 

 rain, the foot-passengers and now and then a hackney coach. 



Though not inhospitably inclined, they seldom gave or accepted 

 invitations, simply because they felt no want of society; consequently 

 had no inducement to encoimter the trouble or expense, since, 

 scanty as were the materials possessed by each for companionship, 

 they were sufficient for the demands of the other. 



Thus they lived in this world, and journeyed towards the next^ 

 withoiit thinking of either, further than to keep a clean house, make 

 themselves comfortable, and pay every one their own, until the im- 

 portant affair of their daughters came to be considered. 



Mrs. Watson thought that nothing could be so desirable as to make 

 them governesses. " Give them a good education and they could 

 provide for themselves like ladies, and live all their lives with ladies, 

 and, may be, with lords!" She had read Richardson's Pcrme/a, as far 

 as to the marriage of the heroine with her master, and she thought it a 

 very pretty, natural, and moral story — a kind of thing which she 

 never doubted happened very often in " great hoiises." 



Her husband implicitly assented to all her arguments ; for, if any 

 thing did interfere with the regularity of her proceedings, it was the 

 children ; and change of any kind was so foreign to all Mr. John 

 Watson's notions and habits that even one for the better would have 

 deranged his little comforts. 



The hoard in the funds was accordingly put in' requisition, and 

 each girl, as she was considered old enough, placed at a good school 

 at Wandsworth. Ruth, the eldest, as soon as she was competent to 

 the task, spared her parents part of the expense of her board, &c. by 

 sharing in the tuition of the younger children ; and so well did she 

 succeed that, when she had completed her eighteenth year, she was 

 chosen, in preference to several other candidates, to fill the situation 

 of assistant teacher at a cheap preparatory school in Essex, where, 

 for twelve pounds a year and her washing (so munificently are 

 mental acquirements sometimes remunerated), she undertook .ihont 

 three times as much labour as an ordinary nursery-maid usually en- 

 gages to perform. 



M. M.— No. .5. 2 I 



